Identity Crisis
by mak5258
Summary: Superman's world is changing, his facade is cracking. Children are being kidnapped in Metropolis and a few people are noticing more than they should about how these disappearances are affecting the Man of Steel.
1. Chapter 1

**So, I've been promising this one since the beginning of Life After the Fall. This is the first chapter of what's looking like will be a lot of chapters- the original chapter four of Life After the Fall. I've already finished most of the next chapter and will probably have it posted around Wednesday. I can't make any promises about an update schedule, but I have a lot written, it just needs tweaking, but that can take awhile. **

**There are a few basics that are completely different from the usual canon that I should probably let you know about before you start reading... There is no Justice League in this, but Clark knows Bruce Wayne/Batman and Oliver Queen/Green Arrow-- they're friends and they help each other out when they can. Also- Clark had a little sister named Jessica, Jonathan and Martha's biological daughter who was five years younger than Clark. She died in a tornado when she was thirteen (Clark seventeen)-- kryptonite from the meteor shower that accompanied Clark's ship was unearthed in the tornado and he wasn't able to save her. Jonathan's death the following summer put the family through a rough time (Martha battling depression, Clark running the farm with the help of his uncles, Jonathan's brothers, while working on his degree in journalism). He met Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan at Smallville High, close to how it happened in the first few seasons of Smallville, and a few others I'll introduce along the way. It only took him five years to learn everything the Kryptonian database had to offer, then Clark returned to the farm for a month before heading out to explore the world, writing humanitarian pieces and developing his language skills and journalistic talent. After three and a half years exploring the world and learning everything he could, he returned to Smallville and spent six months there helping out around the farm and developing the idea of Superman before moving to Metropolis. He was there for four years, partnered with Lois, before he left for Krypton. The plot of Superman I and II and Superman Returns are prettymuch intact, though I and II happen four, almost five, years apart. **

Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I'm making no money out of this.

**Identity Crisis:**

Clark flew low over the crowd gathered outside the hospital. It was weird to think that they were all there to show support for him, for Superman. Of course, it was still weird to think of himself as Superman.

The crowd fell silent when they saw their caped hero floating towards them.

"Thank you," he said, just loud enough for all the people gathered to hear. He searched the crowd quickly, looking for familiar faces. Jimmy was there, standing with the rest of the press of to one side, his camera flashing. He didn't see anybody else from the _Planet_, though. His mother was standing about as close to the front of the group as she could be, tears streaming silently down her face. He hated to see her cry. He couldn't exactly go to her now, though.

Raising a hand above his head, he shot into the distance, the faint pop of the sonic boom rippling the airwaves of his wake.

The crowd stated thinning, then. Taxis swarmed the area, sensing the clients with that weird people-stuck-and-needing-transportation sense that all cabbies seemed to posses. A bus that was lucky enough to have paused on its route nearby found itself flooded with passengers.

Clark doubled back, coming to rest on the tall building across the street from the hospital. More busses were arriving, coming off of their usual routes to provide assistance; everything would flow faster after the huge group of pedestrians got off the street anyways. Clark pulled his cell phone out from the side of his belt and dialed one of the only numbers he actually used out of the numerous he had in his contacts file.

"Hello?" The voice on the other end was tired, tearful. She did not want to be talking on the phone.

"Mom?" The word came out sounding just as tired as Martha's had and he regretted it for a moment, wanting to be strong for her when she was so worried about him.

"Clark?" She gasped. He could see her below, searching the skies for him.

"I'm on the building across the way," he said, waving his glowing phone around form the edge so she could see him.

"I see you."

"I see you, too," he said, putting the phone back to his ear and disappearing into the shadows of the roof.

"Are you okay? What happened? Why did you just leave like that? I was so worried…" the last sentence was barely loud enough for him to hear through the phone, but he wasn't really listening to the receiver anyways.

"I'm fine, Mom, I wouldn't have left the room if I hadn't been…"

"Yes you would've," she interrupted him and he could see her smiling.

"You're right, as usual."

"I'm your mother," she said matter-of-factly, sounding much more like his mother than she had a few minutes ago.

"If you just wait down there, I'll drop down and get you as soon as the crowd clears."

"I'll be on the bus bench over here," she gestured, knowing he'd see, even though it made her look crazy to those around her.

"Okay," he flipped his phone shut again.

It took another hour for the crowd to clear away. A few felt the need to stick around and see if the hospital would let them in to see the bed that he'd been in, but the remaining police officers wouldn't hear of it.

"Ma'am, don't you think you should be getting home?" One officer asked Martha when she was the only one left; the last of the crazies had hailed a cab a moment ago. "I could call you a taxi…?"

"Oh, my son is on his way to get me," Martha assured him, seeing a red glint up near the roof as Clark hovered down towards them.

The officer left her alone, returning to his comrade to help dismantle the barrier they'd set up for crowd control.

"Hey, isn't that…"

"I think it is…" The officers said, shocked, when Clark came into the light, hovering down towards his mother, who was now standing on the edge of the sidewalk.

"Oh, my boy!" Clark heard Martha mutter under her breath as she reached for him. She clung to him and he returned the hug in favor.

"Mom," Clark said, ignoring the looks he was getting from the policemen. "Mom… look at me."

Martha looked up, letting him go and wiping a tear away distractedly. "What happened?" She asked, looking him in the eye and refusing to back down. "_What happened_?"

"Luthor happened," Clark said, unable to hide the deep rooted dislike, hatred, in his voice when he said the name. Martha looked a little surprise at the vehemence in his voice.

"He had a shard of kryptonite, he stabbed me, after… anyways, Lois pulled it out on the plane, but there were a few shards left in the wound. I put as much rock between me and that continent as I could, but… it was made of kryptonite and the normal rock fell away and the kryptonite in the wound and the kryptonite I was lifting too it all out of me."

"Took it out of you," Martha mumbled back at him. She began examining him, starting with his front before moving around to his side, looking for the mentioned stabbing. She sucked her breath in quickly when she saw the hole in the blue fabric, and the dried blood stain. A greenish bruise with a faint red line running through it where the shard had punctured his 'invulnerable' skin took the place of the usually creamy skin under the suite. She put a hand out to touch the scab, but Clark flinched away.

"It's a little tender," he muttered, his face telling her it was a little more than tender.

"So why are you out here flying around?" She shook her head, determination filling her eyes. "You should still be in that hospital- they're trained to help… What the hell were you thinking?! You could've died, Cl- Kal-El!" She frowned deeper, hating to have to use the name his biological parents had given him instead of the one she had chosen. Her eyes filled with tears again as she continued, "I couldn't even get in to see you! What were you thinking? What would I have done if you'd died?! I can't very well go to the morgue and request Superman's body so I can bury it next to his father! They'd think I was crazy just because _you_ were too caught up in your own little mystery to tell that Lois Lane that you didn't just swoop in yesterday! We had to deal with a three year old with high fevers and an aptitude for pulling cabinet doors off when he got excited, and a thirteen year old who liked jumping off the silos to see if he would bounce…!"

"But I did bounce," Clark reminded her, trying to lighten her mood.

"Only because you had springy knees," she said without thinking and smiled. "Darn you," she said when she realized her anger was gone. Her voice was soft again, "Are you sure you're okay? You look a little pale… and that bruise…"

"When am I not pale, Mom?" He smiled and she shrugged. "It'll heal."

"But you are _not_ going out and trying to do anything heroic tonight! You are bringing me home so I can make you a proper pot of tea and something to eat… you never eat right, Cl- Kal-El."

"Probably not," Clark said, knowing that it was a lost cause when it came to his eating habits and his mother.

"See, you're not well! You never let that go without a fight!" She smiled and he chuckled.

"Mom, I'm _fine_," he assured her.

"That's what you said after you woke up after you got home from your little intergalactic excursion. Then you ate half the food in the house and slept for another fourteen hours."

Clark just scrubbed a weary hand over his face and Martha looked at him as though that action proved her point, which it did.

"Mom…"

"Enough of that," Martha said, wiping at her face again. "Now, you're going to bring me home, and you're going to fly _slowly_… You know I hate flying."

"You haven't flown with me since high school, Mom."

"So?"

"I've done a bit more flying since then; I'm not quite so wobbly."

"Says the man who just fell so far he left a dent fifteen yards deep in the park," Martha said, shaking her head as she stepped onto his boots and tightly gripped his forearms. Clark grinned at her, but his eyes were haunted and Martha stopped smiling.

"Ready?" He asked, emotionless, back to being Superman instead of her son.

"Don't pull that trick with me, young man," she thought of snapping, but she remembered the policemen behind her, and just nodded.

"Goodnight, officers," Clark said, nodding to them. Neither of the men who were now several feet below them answered, though one's jaw snapped shut.

"I'm sorry, honey, I'd completely forgotten they were there."

"It's okay," he said, shrugging and making her grip his arms tighter. "Now they'll have something interesting to tell their wives."

"Still…" She didn't finish her sentence because he'd pulled her closer, wrapping his cape around her to protect her from the wind, and shot off into the sky. He could hear her heart racing, but he wasn't worried.

- - -

Officer Frank Harold had never thought he'd witness anything of that sort; he'd been on the force for twenty years now, and now he'd met, sort of, Superman's mother. He looked at Joe Thompson, the newbie officer he'd had as a shadow for the past month; he was a good kid, on his way to being a good cop. Joe had a little girl born just before Superman disappeared, the same age as Frank's oldest grandchild.

"Not a word," Frank heard himself saying as Superman and his mother disappeared into the clouds. "Not a word of this to anyone."

"No way," Joe agreed, nodding. "Who'd believe us, anyway?"

"Lois Lane," Frank replied in all honesty. They stood for silence for another few seconds, staring at the sky.

"Do you think we should tell her?" Joe asked, getting himself moving, loading the last of the plastic barriers into the trunk of their squad car.

"Lois Lane?" Frank asked, getting a nod in response. "I'd bet she already knows."

"I dunno, Frank… Y'think we should tell her anyway?"

"Next time we see her, then, we'll just pull her aside, right?"

"Right."

And that's all they said about that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wow, thanks for the reviews, guys-- it was the push I needed to get this chapter out sooner than planned. Sorry if you didn't like the fact that Superman was stupid enough to let a couple of police officers know that he had a mother, but that's kind of the basis of the story- a crisis of sorts revolving around his identity. That slip was the reason I modified the scene in Life After the Fall and moved it here to deal with all the lovely repurcussions of that moment of post-hospital brain fart. lol, okay, chapter two:**

Lois walked into the bullpen Monday morning with mixed feelings about this new week. On the plus side, Superman had paid her a visit last night—he was alright. Also on the plus, her partner was back and the fact that he had a steaming cup of black coffee waiting for her when she arrived was a testament to how much she hadn't realized she'd missed him. On the less positive side, there was an almost one hundred percent chance that she'd get assigned another Superman interview and things were incredibly awkward with him these days. On the definite negative side, she'd told Richard about Jason's paternity soon after seeing Superman the previous evening and he'd spent the night on the couch of his own free will.

"Morning, Lois!" Clark said in his usual chipper, almost annoying voice. He was a morning person—Lois added that to her list of negatives for the day, but erased it a moment later when she took the offered coffee and felt energy seeping into her.

"Clark, you're a life-saver," she told him sincerely, squeezing his upper arm as she passed. Surprisingly, he had rock-hard biceps; if it were later in the day she'd give them a further squeeze and make fun of him for a bit, but, as it was, she just wanted to get to her desk and get started on her email while finishing her coffee, hopefully getting through most of it before the morning conference.

Clark just shifted in that awkward way of his before heading back to his desk to sort through his own email; sources were reporting in by the dozens, letting him know they'd still be his eyes and ears. He'd never realized how many friends he actually had around the city; he figured if he took up even half the offers to dinner with informants' families, he could make it at least a month without buying groceries.

"Everybody in the conference room _now_!" Perry barked, stomping from his office into the conference room on the other side of Richard's office without checking to make sure his employees were following—if they valued their jobs, they'd be in the conference room in the next two minutes.

Lois and Clark rose as one, each grabbing coffee cups, notepads and pens before rushing after the editor-in-chief into the conference room. Lois made a point of not looking into Richard's office, which Clark noted without saying anything, moving closer behind her to offer his support for the tension he knew was there. It was even worse because he knew he was the cause of it. Lois' only acknowledgement was to save him the seat next to her, as she was much better at slipping between people as they rushed into the room than he was.

"Alright people," Perry started when he saw that most of the staff had made it into the room, seating themselves around the table and gathering around behind when the chairs filled up. "Superman's alive and well," he glanced at Lois for confirmation and didn't get anything, so he continued. "The story's this New Krypton Fiasco that got him landed in the hospital in the first place… we've got the exclusive, having Lois and Richard here…" He went on to instruct each section of the paper something to do with what he'd labeled the New Krypton Fiasco.

Health was assigned to Metropolis General, he wanted interviews of doctors who had treated Superman, the nurse who had discovered him missing—he wanted to know exactly what had happened while Superman was there, if there were protocols being put in place should the Man of Steel ever need to use one of their beds again, and _anything_ else they found in relation. Lifestyles got a piece on how life in Metropolis had changed since Superman had returned and how it was still changing, especially with the recent damages to the city being repaired. And it continued—then Perry got to Lois. After a brief battle of wills, Lois was assigned to get the next Superman exclusive; Clark was assigned to the reparations story. Lois was pissed, to say the least.

"I can't believe him, _shoving_ Superman back into my life without even _thinking_ that _maybe_ I don't want him back in my life. _Maybe_ I've got enough on my plate when it comes to him anyway and the last thing I need is _him_ swooping in for the interview I have to do for the sake of my job. Richard's already _freaked-out_ about this whole thing, apparently I act differently when Superman's flying around… _do_ I act differently, Clark? Tell me honestly: is there a difference in my behavior since he's come back? Why should that even matter, anyway?" She was talking a mile a minute as she drove through Metropolis, Clark on speakerphone hooked into her car stereo. It was late; she'd stayed at the _Planet_ until ten to get the interview with Superman. She and Clark had worked on the reparation piece he'd been assigned all afternoon, in-and-out of the bullpen all day chasing down various sources. There'd been a pair of police officers who had seemed to want to talk to her when they'd stopped for lunch at a diner a block from the Metropolis Police Department—Lois and Clark were proud to say that they were the only two reporters in the city allowed into that diner (called Tracy's after the old widow who owned and operated it)—but they'd kept their distance when they saw she had somebody with her.

"Uh, well—I wouldn't know, Lois…" Clark said, she could practically hear him shrug. "I was on my trip while you were, supposedly, acting differently because he wasn't around…"

"Oh, that's right," she said, rolling her eyes, then cursing loudly at the man in front of her when he slowed down to take a turn. Clark chuckled on the other end. "Y'know, I'd forgotten that you'd ever left?"

"I think I'll, uh, take that as a compliment," he said uncertainly. Lois laughed, putting the pedal to the metal, so to speak, and continuing around the turning guy. They sat in silence for a few moments, Lois actually focusing on the road, Clark flipping through the channels on his recently hooked-up cable, courtesy of Bruce Wayne, or at least his remarkable investing tips when it came to Clark's savings before he left for Krypton.

"Wow," Clark said after a couple of minutes; he'd just heard the crackling of flames, a raging fire, or what would soon be a raging fire, about four blocks from Lois' current position. He hated to send her into a potentially dangerous situation, but both she and Perry would kill him if they knew he'd had the advance word on a story and let it slip. "Big fire on 32nd and Grand… I wonder if they're going to call Superman on this one…" he trailed off, listening. Sure enough, they were calling for him a few seconds later.

"32nd and what?" Lois asked, he heard her veer off course, taking the turn down 32nd much too fast.

"Grand."

"32nd and Grand… I'll be there in two… you coming, Clark?"

"No car," he reminded her.

"Call a taxi."

"You get the interviews, bring them here and I'll type them up, how about that?"

"Fine," she said, hanging up on him as she accelerated toward the burning apartment complex. Clark was already changed and leaping off his balcony by the time she'd put her phone in her purse.

It was indeed a huge fire, much larger than it had sounded. Clark cursed himself as he flew over, looking for people trapped inside and hotspots to warn the firefighters about. There was a nearly audible sigh of relief from the crowd when he flew over; Clark was just relieved to see that channel four was already setting up their equipment and looked like they'd be broadcasting by the time Lois arrived.

The first floor was clear, the second floor clear… third floor, fourth floor… a little boy in his closet on the fifth floor. The closet was filling up with smoke, the bedroom outside in flames. The boy was trapped. Clark swooped through the window heedless of the glass and the surge of fire that sprung out of the window behind him; Lois got out of her car just in time to see his boots disappear into the flames.

Unexpectedly, she felt a rush of panic when the flames shot out after him. For a brief moment, she worried that he'd burn alive, then, shaking her head, she reminded herself just who it was that had just swooped through that window. She'd been battling these inexplicably tender feelings toward the father of her child since he'd returned. She wanted to hate him. She wanted to rage and him and blame him for everything that was off in her personal life at the moment. But he was Superman and she was desperately in love with him. Actually, it wasn't Superman that she was in love with—it was Kal-El. She knew that, at one time, she had been in love with Superman, the symbol, the public figure. But these days, since right before he left and since he returned, she couldn't help but look past the symbol and into the man. It kind of helped to have had his child come out of her womb even though she couldn't remember how he'd been put there in the first place.

Kal-El soared out of the window again, followed by another wisp of flame. Lois released a breath she hadn't been aware she was holding and realized that her feet had carried her to the rear end of the closest ambulance, where Kal-El was now landing with a tiny figure wrapped in his cape.

The boy looked about four years old, about a head shorter than Jason with hair cropped near his head. He was shaking, his eyes closed, his breath coming in wheezing gasps as he clutched at Kal-El with pink, heat-kissed fingers. There were no serious burns, thanks to Superman, but the boy had severe smoke inhalation-related problems coming his way.

The paramedics rushed forward the moment Kal-El touched down, taking the boy from his arms as gently as could be managed. Despite this, the boy cried out in pain, reaching for the comforting width of Kal-El's shoulders. Kal-El held his little hand in his big one for a moment before turning back to the fire, giving the boy's hand one last squeeze before approaching the fire chief.

There was a flash of eye contact between the two of them, super hero and reporter, as he turned toward the chief. In that moment, both knew that the other's thoughts were in the exact same place, miles away in a comfortable condominium, tucked safely between his Aquaman sheets—Jason.

They both forced their respective masks into place, then. Kal-El turned all the way around and strode confidently over to the fire chief and reported that there wasn't anybody left in the building, then began discussing strategy for putting the blaze out. Lois refocused on the firemen, cops, and EMTs around her.

The only one who noticed their brief look was an old ambulance driver named Jim Harris, the man who had been driving the bus that brought Superman to Metropolis General. He'd spent a fair amount of time around both of them, talking to Superman when he brought victims directly to the hospital after a rescue or in situations like this when an ambulance was called but nobody ended up hurt—he'd been interviewed by the infamous Lane & Kent team time and time again as he was the Met. General driver who knew the quickest route to anyplace in the city and was therefore usually the one sent in after Superman. Not even the wizened driver, though, had uncovered Superman's identity just yet.

Jim simply filed this glimpse into the private life of Superman away with the rest of the snatches of conversations he'd overheard and forbidden touches he'd noticed over the years. He didn't plan on telling anybody any of these things, and he'd never thought of blackmailing either party; he was simply curious, wanting to add more to his mental file before his retirement.

It took Superman and MFD half an hour to put out the blaze. By the end, all parties concerned, even Kal-El, were covered with soot. Kal-El's cape was nearly black at the very bottom edge. The ambulance with the unnamed boy victim was long gone, so when one of the firefighters tripped over a fallen beam and broke his leg, Superman stepped in and took him to the hospital. Again, he exchanged a look with Lois, this time unnoticed by any in the surrounding crowd.

"Do you have anything add to your earlier statement?" Lois asked the fire chief, a thin man with a large mustache. He'd risen to the position just before Superman's disappearance, meaning he was still getting used to the Blue Boy Scout stepping in and expediting the putting out of fires all over the city. The chief, Ralph Boyd, shook his head.

"No, that's about it, Miss Lane… we're still looking into the possibility of arson, Superman mentioned signs of accelerant, but we have to wait for lab confirmation before you can release that," he gave her a glare and she nodded, rolling her eyes—Boyd was a stickler for forensic proof, while Lois, despite their current tensions, put her trust in Kal-El's observations. Lois nodded, though, and turned back to the scene, wishing Jimmy were there with her to get pictures.

"Thank you for your time, chief."

"Anytime, Miss Lane," he said tensely, almost as though the Mayor might've had a word with him about Lois's close relation to Superman and the need to appease him through her or something. Lois chuckled to herself after she'd turned away, looking for somebody else to interview who might give her a few more opinions. Most of the people who lived in the complex had been asleep, woken to the sound of their fire alarms blazing. The only one who hadn't made it out before the whole thing had gone up was the little boy who'd hidden from the noise in his closet; according to the neighbors—the parents had gone in the ambulance with him to the hospital—the boy was one of five children and the parents had simply made a mistake in a moment of panic; those same neighbors were holding the hands of the four other children, all in varying degrees of terror and exhaustion written across their faces. Five years ago, Lois would've asked the kids if they had any comments on the night's events, but now, with Jason, she wouldn't dream of it.

"Miss Lane!" A young officer said, approaching her. There was an older officer behind him, near a squad car. She recognized them as the pair she and Clark had encountered at Tracy's earlier in the day. Raising her eyebrows at them, she responded.

"Yes?"

"Er, could we have a word?" The young officer asked, thumbing back toward his partner and the car.

"Sure…" Lois said, wondering if they were implying she should get in the car and come quietly, because she couldn't remember breaking any laws recently.

"My name's Joe Thompson, this is my partner, Frank Harold," the elder officer nodded to her and she nodded back in reservation. "We, er… you tell 'er, Frank."

"Well, Miss Lane," Frank said after shooting a glare at his partner, clearing his throat. "We were there the night Superman left the hospital and we just, er, had something we wanted to ask you."

"Alright…?" Lois said, shifting again uncomfortably. She resituated her large purse on her shoulder, feeling Jason's spare inhaler get jammed between her wallet and her elbow again.

"Do you know if he has any family here at all? I mean, how old was he when he got here, anyway?" He asked in a rush, Lois raised her eyebrows at him. There had been plenty of times during her interviews with Kal-El that she had thought that he might have spent more time on Earth than he wanted anybody to know. There were times when she could've sworn he was about to share a story about high school or a parent, but he'd always cut himself off, usually blushing furiously, then change the subject. She had always let him, hoping he'd tell her in his own time.

"I'm not sure what you mean," she said evasively.

"It's just we met his mother the night he left the hospital," Frank said, stepping away from the squad car, keeping his voice low. Lois's eyebrows drew together. "Well, not _met_ her, we weren't introduced…"

"She was there all afternoon, I remember seeing her, just thinking she was another face in the crowd," Joe said, shaking his head. "She was the last to leave, told us her son was on his way… next thing we know, Superman's drifting out of the sky and calling her mom, and all that."

"Weird," Frank said under his breath, shaking his head.

"Did he ever, which is to say, we were wondering if you knew…?"

"He never lies," she said pensively, "but he keeps his secrets… why did you bring this to me?"

"Well, we figured if anybody should know, you should," Frank said, shrugging. Lois narrowed her eyes at them again.

"I'm not going to publish it," she informed them harshly.

"No! We didn't mean…!" Joe defended immediately.

"We just meant…" Frank paused. "Well, it wouldn't seem right if we didn't tell you, I mean… you're Lois Lane."

"That's what they say," she replied, scrubbing a hand over her eyes and then looking up at the sky. _Oh, Kal-El; what have you gotten us into now?_

- - -

Lois pulled into her driveway about an hour later, having called Clark on the ride to tell him they'd have to work on the story in the morning. She was exhausted, ready to just go up and fall into bed. She did, however, also feel the need to take a long shower to get the smell of smoke out of her hair first. She gave in to that urge, poking her head into Jason's room briefly before making her way to the empty bedroom she usually shared with Richard, having passed his sleeping form in the living room, where he was taking up the couch.

The hot water washed away the grit from the past few hours, but it didn't do much to ease her mind like it normally did. If she weren't so tired, she'd have half a mind to go speeding back to the _Daily Planet_ rooftop to have a word with the Man of Steel about secrets. First, she wanted to know more of his secrets, as she was the mother of his child and his child would soon be asking questions she wanted to be able to answer. Second, she wanted him to keep his secrets more secret when it came to the rest of the world.

At the same time, though, her mind was racing with new information and that itching feeling that she'd forgotten something very important. So Kal-El had an adopted mother here on Earth. That would mean that he arrived here in his childhood and was taken in and raised by a human couple, as a human. That put a whole new perspective on the caped hero.

She stopped by Jason's room again, this time going in to look her son over before going to bed herself. He was soundly asleep, not stirring in the slightest when she pulled the blankets tighter around him and moved the hair out of his face. There was a rush of wind; Lois looked up and was half surprised to see Kal-El hovering just inside the window, framed by the curtains, the pale moonlight turning him into a silhouette.

"Hi," Lois said softly, crossing the room to stand beside Jason's bed next to him.

"Hi," he whispered back, settling onto the floor next to her silently. They stood without speaking for a moment, both watching Jason sleep peacefully, his eyelids fluttering in REM.

They stood like that for a good five minutes, drifting closer together as they stood watching their son sleep. "I need to talk to you about something," Lois whispered when they were so close their shoulders were almost touching. Jason stirred slightly in his sleep at his mother's voice. Kal-El looked over at her, a flash of fear in his eyes before he nodded solemnly. Lois resisted the urge to take his hand and lead him out of the room, instead just walking out and glancing behind when she reached the door to make sure he was following.

Lois had the odd thought that this was probably the furthest he'd been inside a house in a long time; she then remembered what the police officers had told her only a few hours ago. Chances were, if he had a mother, he had a home, whether with his mother or with the information she had probably falsified in his early childhood. She'd come to that conclusion by the time the pair of them reached her bedroom, Kal-El looking puzzled at the absence of Richard. He found the heart beat downstairs in the living room; Richard certainly wasn't asleep. In fact, he was probably listening to the footfalls above him and knowing that the steps behind Lois's weren't Jason's.

Lois turned to face him, pressed her hands together like she was praying and pressed the tips of her fingers to her lips, then turned away. She paced the area at the end of her bed for a minute, not quite making eye contact. Kal-El stood there patiently, watching her pace stoically. His thoughts, though, were much less calm. He was trying to imagine what she wanted to talk about, not coming up with anything that would end positively.

"What happened the night you left the hospital?" She asked, stopping suddenly to face him, her eyes boring into his.

"Pardon?" He asked, his voice almost cracking with the complete unexpectedness of the question.

"Just after that fire, two police officers approached me—" she was going to continue but the look that crossed Kal-El's face told her he already knew what she was going to say.

"They told you about my mother," he said simply. Lois nodded, crossing her arms and glaring at him before resuming pacing. She stopped again after another moment to glare at him again.

"_I gave birth to your son and he has another grandmother out there somewhere_!" She said, stage whispering, wanting to yell at him but keeping her voice down for the sake of those she presumed to be sleeping. Jason, at least, was still asleep. Richard, though, was lying on the couch watching the ceiling through which he could hear Lois's pacing footsteps and Superman's shifting weight.

Upstairs, Clark shifted again, resisting the temptation to run a hand through his hair in his discomfort. "Lois," he tried, wishing he had pockets in the skin-tight suit. She continued to glare. Clark settled on crossing his arms in front of him. "You, of all people, know I have secrets."

"Yes, I know you have secrets," she sighed. "I happen to be a big part of one of them."

"You knew all of my secrets once, Lois," he said softly, bringing a frown to Lois's face.

"Why can't I remember? I mean, I can't even remember ever… you know—did we…?"

"Yes," he said, chuckling but turning bright red to match his cape at the same time. Then he turned more solemn. "You were miserable—knowing all my secrets," he said the words with such heartfelt sorrow, looking up at her with the pain of her lack of memories. She took a step toward him without meaning to, stopping herself before actually touching him.

"Kal-El," she said softly, not sure what to do with her hands; she wanted to touch him, but she didn't want to touch him. She settled for taking his hand between both of hers and massaging his fingers a bit uncomfortably. "Things are different than they were five years ago."

"Are they? I hadn't noticed," he said dryly, taking his hand back from her and this time running both hands through his hair in frustration. She gave him an odd look, not expecting a gesture so human from him. He gave a mirthless chuckle, stepping forward to take her hand this time, fingering the engagement ring on her left hand. She didn't meet his eyes, glaring down at the ring. "Lois," he took a deep breath and brought her hand to his lips briefly, "I would like nothing better than to share my life with you, but I don't want to see you in that state again… Jason changes things. Richard changes things. Luthor changes things…"

"You having a mother here changes things."

"I had a mother last time, Lois."

"Have I ever met her?"

"No," he said, thoughtful for the moment. "She reads all your work religiously though… couldn't look at me without laughing for a month after you decided to call me 'Superman.'"

"Hey, it's…" she paused, trying to think of the right word.

"Pretentious, cliché," he provided, smirking.

"Hey, I could've called you Mister Amazing or something."

"I doubt it would've stuck," he chuckled. Lois paused in thought before looking up at him with careful eyes.

"What have you told Clark about all this?"

"What?" Clark couldn't hide his surprise at the question.

"Clark Kent, my partner… you used to talk to him—does he know your mother?"

"Yes," he replied slowly, not wanting to lie to her. She frowned at him.

"So Clark can know your secrets, but I can't?"

"No," Clark said, folding his arms across his chest. "Clark dealt with my secrets in his own way."

"His trip around the world."

Clark nodded once. "Just when he thought it was safe to come back, I show up again," he smiled bitterly, hating the taste of the lie on his tongue. He was about to say something when he heard a series of shots from somewhere in California. He sighed, pressing Lois's hands to his lips again. "I have to go to California," he sighed.

"What?" Lois asked, reeling both from the feeling of his lips on her hands to his revelations and the change of subject.

"Shots fired in California, I have to go," he let go of her hands and stepped toward the window. She just nodded, holding in a sigh.

- - -

Clark wasn't surprised when Lois called his cell phone at five o'clock the next morning. In fact, he was surprised she'd managed to wait that long. "Clark Kent," he said, toweling his hair from his recent shower

"Oh, c'mon, Kent—you knew it was me," she said, buttering her morning toast as she packed Jason's lunch.

"Good morning, Lois, to what do I owe the _early_ pleasure?" He asked pleasantly, setting the phone on the counter and spinning into the primary colored suit, taking a charcoal suit from his closet and putting it on more slowly before bringing the phone back up to his ear.

"I need to talk to you."

"I'm listening," he said, waiting for her to go off on him about Superman's secrets.

"Actually… I really don't want to talk about this over the phone."

"Alright."

"Do you want to meet for breakfast in about an hour? The usual place?"

"Is the usual place still standing?" He asked, chuckling, x-raying his bedroom for his glasses.

"Don't be an ass, Clark—would I _ask_ if it weren't?"

"Well, I never know with you."

"Who're you talking to, Mommy?" Jason's voice came from somewhere near Lois's elbow.

"Mister Clark," Lois answered, whispering and holding the phone away from her mouth; Clark heard anyway.

"Can I say g'morning to Mister Clark?"

"Do you have a moment to say hello to Jason, Clark?" Lois asked, holding up a finger to tell her son to be patient. He was rolling forward on the balls of his feet in his excitement.

"Sure," Clark said, careful to keep his voice from betraying his true eagerness at the prospect of saying good morning to his son.

"Okay, be quick now, hun," Lois said, handing her cell phone to her son and walking into the living room to make sure his backpack was properly packed—he'd need extra notebooks and crayons for the afternoon he'd be spending in the bullpen.

"Morning, Mister Clark!" Jason said, bounding up the stairs to his room with the phone immediately.

"Good morning, Jason," Clark said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. "How did you sleep?"

"Really good… how long did you stay last night? I heard you go to talk to Mommy after you finished tucking me in," Clark paused for a moment; Jason had made it clear that he knew much more than his mother when it came to his biological father's identity. When he'd seen Clark in the bullpen standing near a screen with Superman flying past, he'd known that Clark and Superman were the same person. Then he'd heard Lois whisper to his unconscious body that he was Jason's father.

"Not for very long; I had to go to California to help out after a little bit; sorry we kept you up."

"I wasn't that tired anyway," Jason sighed, Clark could hear him tinkering with things in his bedroom.

"Still," Clark said, shrugging though Jason would never know. "So what are you doing at school today?"

"It's Friday! We have a field trip to the zoo this morning; Mom's making me a bag lunch to eat while I'm there. I'm gonna eat by the tigers!"

"They your favorite?"

"Yeah! Will you take me to see them someday? In the real forest?"

"You'll have to talk to your Mom about that, but if it's okay with her I'd bring you."

"Really? Yes!" Jason was dressed now, working on finding his shoes. A few seconds later he sighed in frustration. "I can't find my shoes."

"They're under your bed," Clark said after a quick scan across the city and into Jason's bedroom.

"Thanks," Jason said brightly, fishing his shoes out from under his bed and fussing with the laces until Clark gave him step by step instructions over the phone. Lois came in to get her phone back from him and couldn't help but chuckle when she heard Jason repeating the instructions back to Clark as he tied his second shoe.

"Can I talk to Clark now, honey?" Lois asked as Jason beamed at his shoes. Across town, Clark was sitting down with the _Daily Planet_, featuring a front page article he'd written the previous afternoon, his mug of coffee now having been refilled twice.

"Okay, Mom; bye Mister Clark!" Jason said.

"Bye, Jason; I'll talk to you later," Clark said, getting up to gather his story notes for his briefcase.

"Me again," Lois said, shooing Jason into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

"Give me a hint at what we've got to talk about?" He asked, though he already suspected. He was packed and ready to go, considering calling a cab to bring him to their usual breakfast place, a locally owned corner coffee shop that served breakfast pastries and fruit to go along with their coffees called simply The Coffee Shoppe.

"Superman," Lois sighed, dumping what was left of her morning coffee into the sink.

"Ah," Clark said, snapping his briefcase, putting his overcoat on and scanning his apartment for things he might've forgotten.

"Yeah," Lois sighed. Richard had just come to stand in the doorway; Lois held up a cup of coffee like a peace offering but Richard didn't take it, going instead to the fridge and pouring himself a glass of milk. Lois sighed again. "I'll talk to you in a bit then, Clark."

"Yep," Clark replied, trying to sound lighthearted, as though he hadn't heard what had transpired between the pair. The other end went dead, but Clark couldn't help but hear the argument that started up between the pair of them, beginning with the milk vs. coffee and then moving on to his recently developed habit of sleeping on the couch and the visitor he'd heard moving about in the bedroom while he'd been trying to sleep. He was sure Jason heard the whole thing from his bedroom, as the picture he was drawing showed only himself being carried away by Superman, his parents waving from the bottom corner next to their house. The lines got noticeably darker as the voices grew louder downstairs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Alrighty, chapter three—three updates in a week, woohoo! That's probably the only time this is going to happen. I'm going home for the weekend and it's going to be insanely busy, no writing will get done. **

**Cali—Sorry! I didn't mean for my last A/N to sound so mean! I was just trying to nip it in the bud so far as 'is Superman really a complete and total blockhead?' goes, because that was the big complaint when that first chapter was chapter four of LAtF, and it's definitely a legitimate point. Sorry!!!**

Clark ordered two tall, black coffees at The Coffee Shoppe, getting a warm reception from the owners. Apparently they hadn't seen Lois since Clark's departure. He was led back to the table he and Lois always sat at; it was a spindly-legged table with a flowery tablecloth bearing stains from many of Lois and Clark's breakfasts in past years.

He was waiting only a few minutes when Lois marched in, hailed in the same exuberant voices as he had been. She looked like she might explode at whoever approached her next, merely glaring at the owners when they shouted out their greeting. They looked pityingly over her shoulders as she walked towards Clark, smiling knowingly when Clark held up her coffee without giving so much as a greeting until she'd downed half the cup.

"Morning, Lois," he said cheerfully, browsing the menu while she glowered. "How've the last twenty minutes treated you?"

She groaned in response, finishing off her coffee and scrubbing a hand over her face—keeping her hands over her eyes and leaning her elbows against the table. Clark braced the wobbly legs with his foot as she did this, sipping his own coffee and nodding over at their waitress to bring her another coffee.

"Thank you," Lois managed when the second cup arrived. She took a moderate sip and stared directly at Clark. "You know what; I don't even want to talk about it. I just don't want to talk about it," she sighed, tugging at her hair until it was behind her ears and then crossing her arms on the table in front of her and glancing through the menu.

"Another fight with Richard?" He asked patiently, sounding for all the world like the male best friend ready to step up and listen to the outpouring of complicated emotions usually reserved for a woman.

"Yes," Lois sighed. "And, you know, it's completely ridiculous! It started when I poured him a cup of coffee. _A cup of coffee, Clark_! So I poured him coffee, but no, he, without a word, a 'no thanks, Lois, I'm not up for coffee today,' or anything like that, just goes to the fridge and pours himself a glass of milk instead. I mean, we were talking just before that and I said I wanted to talk to you about Superman and, just like that, he's giving me the cold shoulder. Not even taking coffee just because it's from me!" She shook her head, taking another sip of coffee as though it were the most precious liquid in the world.

"Do you think he was mad because you wanted to talk about Superman… or because you wanted to talk about Superman with me?"

"With you?"

"Instead of him."

"Y'know, I hadn't even thought of that," she said, settling back into her chair. Clark removed his foot from the spot on the floor where it had been bracing the table and leaned back comfortably in his own chair. They ordered after a moment and then sat in silence while Lois went over her most recent argument in her head again, Clark trying not to remember that either way he looked at it, he was the cause of the fight. "We're going to have to talk, just sit down and get it all out," Lois sighed after a few minutes of silence, Clark finishing his first coffee. "I can't stand this random outburst thing, and Jason… he's not faring so well for it either."

"It's best you figure this out for everybody involved," he raised an eyebrow and Lois looked up to contemplate him for a moment.

"Clark, how much do you know about Superman?"

"What?"

"Well, there are some things we talked about last night and he said you knew, well, things I hadn't even thought to ask," she shrugged, Clark waited for her to continue. "Have you really met his mother?"

"Yes," he replied, his voice as low as hers despite the lack of people anywhere near them to overhear.

"How? I mean, _I'm_ supposed to be his press contact. Not that I really care, but…"

"Everybody needs somebody to talk to, Lois; I'm a set of ears that can provide a limited amount of feedback, you're his press contact and…" he trailed off, not sure what would be appropriate to label Lois's part in his life as Superman. She wasn't his girlfriend anymore as she was engaged to Richard, he would still call her a friend but he doubted she'd call him a friend, and 'baby-momma' was certainly not something she would appreciate.

"How much do you know about him, Clark?"

"A fair amount."

"How, er, how much do _I _know in comparison to what you know?" It sounded like the question pained her to ask. Clark only shrugged.

"You know things about him I don't," he lied. "I should tell you—um—I – uh—he told me about Jason," he said in a rush. He didn't want her to not talk about her feelings about having a half Kryptonian son to him, didn't want her to have to try to cover for whatever little slips Jason may have in his presence. He had enough practice coming up with them that he'd be able to cover for his son, too, if need be.

"You… you know about Jason?"

"Yes, he told me just after he got out of the hospital, right after he told his mother, I think," he shrugged. That part, at least, was partially true in a weird sort of way; he'd stood in front of his bathroom mirror repeating 'Jason Lane is my son' over and over, trying to get it to really sink in that he was a father. After a tense moment, Lois's eyes wide with panic, her thoughts spinning through scenario after scenario, she relaxed and nodded once.

"I'm glad."

"You're glad?" He'd thought she'd be furious.

"I'm glad he told you, it's a big secret to keep all by myself."

"By yourself? Doesn't Richard know?"

"Yes, and that's part of the problem," she leaned forward again, covering her eyes and leaning her elbows on the table. Clark shifted so that he could brace the table again. They sat in silence when the waitress brought their orders, Lois getting the Coffee Shoppe's famous fruit salad and wheat toast made from bread baked in the Shoppe itself, while Clark had ordered the biggest apple fritter available in all Metropolis.

"So why is Richard knowing a problem?" Clark prompted after they'd both had a few bites.

"Because," Lois groaned, then lowered her voice again. "He and I both thought that Jason was his. I didn't know for sure until he threw a piano across the room on that yacht!" She lowered her voice even further, "Clark, I can't remember ever, you know… I don't remember being in a situation with Superman where I'd wind up having his child."

Clark frowned thoughtfully, it was the first time Lois had ever spoken of this to him in either guise. She looked both terrified and sad at the same time; if he had been standing before her as Superman, though, he was sure he'd see only anger flashing in her eyes. Not for the first time, he was glad that he was her best friend outside of the primary colored suit. "He told me a bit about that," Clark said as softly as he could with Lois still hearing him. She leaned forward, eager to have an explanation. "I remember a bit of that time too, it was right before I left…" he cleared his throat. "You were miserable, Lois, when he told you all of his secrets. They're big secrets to keep—not to say the truth about Jason isn't a big secret to keep, but… You were together in those days that Zod, Ursa, and Non attempted and almost succeeded to take over the world. I'm not really sure what happened, exactly. You and I were on assignment in Niagara Falls, then you and Superman disappeared for almost a week; you showed up at the _Planet _a wreck, looking up at the sky every few seconds as though you expected it to fall on you. You were constantly shaking, you barely spoke. Then Superman appeared again and you got even worse, hanging out of windows to try to see if he was alright… I swear you must've chewed off every eraser on every pencil I owned in the hours that he fought Zod. Then you disappeared north again. When you came back you weren't as worried, you weren't physically shaking or anything like that. You just weren't the same. You'd sit and stare into space for long bits of time—not the positive, 'I'm in love,' staring into space but the completely distracted and possibly in danger type of distracted. Your writing suffered for it too. I know Superman was worried about you; he wanted you to be happy again, to stop worrying about him. The stress of the secrets was eating away at you," he sighed. Lois was hanging onto his every word. "You went up on the roof one afternoon just less than a month after the rogue Kryptonians were defeated. You hadn't come down after about three hours so I went to check on you and I found you sitting in that spot at the base of the wall with a dazed look on your face. You didn't remember anything about whatever happened between you and Superman, but you were back to the way you've always been," Clark's hands were shoved deep in his pockets now, hands clenched tightly. He wasn't outright lying to her, but he was twisting the truth enough so that he felt horribly guilty. "He regretted taking your memories from you almost as soon as he had done it, but you were happy again. He never said it, but I think that might've been why he left," he paused a moment. He'd never really thought about just _why_ he had left, though he'd regretted leaving many times in the past five years. The change in his and Lois's relationship had played a part, certainly; he'd felt more alone than ever after what could be thought of as his and Lois's break-up—the discovery of the supposed remains of Krypton had only intensified that feeling and he'd gone in the hope that maybe, just maybe, there might be someone like him out there. Of course, he'd come back to find just that, but that was a whole different conversation.

"And why did you leave?" Lois asked quietly after he'd been silent for a moment. Clark looked up at her and shrugged.

"So much had happened. Superman was gone and you couldn't remember any of his secrets, leaving me alone with all of that in my head," he paused. "I know you know they're big secrets to keep. It's not something I trusted myself with in a bullpen full of curious reporters and no sign of Superman on the horizon."

"I was alone when you left," Lois said after another few minutes. It was now nearing seven o'clock, both finished with their breakfasts and working on the refills of their coffees. Clark froze, listening to her as attentively as she'd listened to him a moment ago; he'd never heard her speak of her time without him in any sort of detail. "Richard started at the _Planet_ about a week after you left. He started asking me out that first week, but…" she shrugged. "Superman disappeared that Sunday, you know—the world was in uproar. I don't think I slept all week. Perry stuck Richard on me as a travel buddy—I was half expecting to run into you at an airport or something we went to so many places," she sighed. "I started getting morning sickness after we got back, but I just thought I'd been stressed out and traveling too much on too little sleep… Richard proposed after I told him I was pregnant, we thought it was his. I didn't accept his proposal," she cleared her throat, tucking her hair behind her ears and continuing to fidget before reminding herself that she was just talking to Clark. "He kept proposing, though, until I gave in," she smiled as at a fond memory. "I moved in with him when I was about seven months along and then, just barely a month later, Jason was born," again she was smiling. Clark fought to keep a straight face; he wasn't sure if he should be glad Lois had had support during this time, glad she had resisted said support, or even worse for leaving her than he usually did. "Y'know, I keep forgetting that you weren't around either," she sighed in frustration. "I should get you some baby pictures. Jimmy went nuts with his camera; well, more nuts than usual. Richard was in Austria on a story when I went into labor, so it was Perry and Jimmy who brought me to the hospital—"

"You were at work when it happened, weren't you?" Clark asked, resisting the urge to laugh outright at her. She glared but confirmed it.

"Yes, I was. I'd been working on the Henderson murders piece, the one we worked on right before you left, remember?" Clark nodded. "Well, the court took its time getting everything through, so I was just finishing on it, but anyway—Jimmy and Perry took me to Metropolis General, I've never seen the Chief so panicked, kept barking at me to keep breathing as he drove. Jimmy, though, oh God," she rolled her eyes, laughing. "He alternated between taking pictures every three seconds and freaking out more than I was. I'm pretty sure I destroyed half of his film, as a good amount of them were taken of me all red faced in the back seat of Perry's car, followed by me sweating in a hospital bed, followed by a _few_ that I kept out of the flames for Jason's baby books," she grinned. "You should ask Jimmy, though, if he has any photos I don't know about, steal them, and burn them for me," Clark grinned back at her, shaking his head. "Richard didn't make it back to the States until Jason was a week old. He was premature, you know, so they were just letting us out of the hospital; Richard came right from the airport to pick us up and take us home… Jimmy and Perry were waiting for us when we got there, Jimmy taking picture after picture; Perry _cried_."

"You're joking."

"No, I'm dead serious… he tried to hide it, but…" she trailed off in a sigh punctuated by giggles.

"I can't believe I missed it," he sighed, his voice tainted with much more regret than should've been there. Lois didn't hear it, though, still trying to qualm her giggles.

- - -

Half an hour later, the pair of them were in the elevator on the way up to the top floor of the _Daily Planet_ building. "Lane, Kent, where the _hell_ have you been?" Perry asked, marching toward them from the vicinity of Lois's desk.

"Er, breakfast," Lois said, unable to keep out a slight chuckle, still thinking of his reaction to Jason's birth.

"Breakfast? _Breakfast_?" Perry said incredulously, sounding as though the mere idea of eating a morning meal was ludicrous. "What the hell are you doing eating when the next big story is breaking around our ears?!"

"What's the story, Chief?" Lois asked, switching into reporter mode in an instant

"A child, a boy named Harry Ricks, disappeared from his home this morning. Whoever took him was good; no alarms, didn't even catch Superman's attention, the _parents_ are a whole other story. Divorcing, that whole thing. I want the inside scoop. Now, get outta my bullpen!" He threw a notecard with the address on it at Clark, who was sure to fumble with it before catching it.

Lois and Clark were already headed back to the elevator, briefcases both tossed on Lois's desk. Lois's heels clacked loudly at her rushed step, Clark moving silently behind her and managing not to trip on a thing while keeping up with her, not that anybody noticed.

- - -

The Ricks' lived in a nice suburban neighborhood in a large house with a large lawn. There was a minivan parked in the open garage, toys were strewn about haphazardly, the beginnings of a treehouse and the supplies to continue building were draped all over the tall maple tree in the corner of the yard. There was a garden with more plants than Lois or Clark could name and it looked as though it was usually well-tended.

The neighborhood was flooded with press and police, forcing the taxi Lois and Clark were in to drop them off almost a block from the actual house. They paid the driver, who pulled into the nearest driveway to turn around and booked it out of the neighborhood, and walked the rest of the way to the house, squeezing between media vans and police cars.

"… the second child to be abducted from his home in the past week; Mr. and Mrs. Ricks have no official comment; very little information is making it's way to us at this moment. Word has it, however, that investigators are seeking Superman, hoping his unique ability to hear over long distances will be of some use in finding little Harry Ricks," the anchorwoman gave her camera a very serious look until the cameraman gave her a wave as they stopped the live feed.

"I don't think Superman will be of much help on this," Clark sighed for Lois's ears only. She turned, raising a curious eyebrow at him, he shrugged. "I'm pretty sure he has to know what the person sounds like to be able to hone in on them."

"What they sound like?"

"Yeah, you know, like…" he tried to find the words to describe what she sounded like without sounding like he knew exactly what he was talking about. "How their breathing and heart beat and all that sound all together."

"Couldn't he just listen for voices, somebody saying the kid's name—maybe a terrified seven year old muttering, hoping that Superman would come and save him?"

"What does this particular boy sound like, though?" Clark pointed out. He wished he could explain it to her. He couldn't tell her that he would recognize her sounds anywhere, that he had, once upon a time, listened to her sleeping just to get himself to fall asleep. The strong sound of her heart beat, the steady in and out of her breath only barely touched by her smoking habit, the unique buzzing that was the electric current of the synapses in her brain generating her thoughts—a sound that was all but inaudible even to his ears—and the rustle of her clothes and hair that was exclusive to her and the way she moved. It had taken months to learn the sound of Lois, to be able to hear it anywhere, to subconsciously pick up on any subtle changes whether he would have to react to those changes or not. He could also identify his mother this way, Jimmy and Perry to a lesser extent. He had started learning Jason's sound before he'd even known he was his son; even if he was just Lois's son he wanted to be able to hear him. A few of Jason's sounds, such as the relaxed heart rate and the rapid fire of the synapses, made more sense once Clark had learned that Jason was half Kryptonian, and it only made him want to learn his son's sound more.

Yes, he could just open up his hearing to all of Metropolis and listen for the distressed whisper of a child, but there were so many noises in Metropolis to sort through. It would be almost impossible to pick out one little boy's voice, a little boy he'd never met before, from among thousands.

"We could find a home video of him or something," Lois suggested with a shrug. Clark smiled; she was trying to help. No doubt she was putting herself in Mrs. Ricks's position, imagining that Jason was the little boy missing.

"That might help," Clark admitted, though he didn't want her to get the wrong idea. A home video didn't come complete with a heart beat; the microphones on affordable cameras weren't nearly good enough to pick that sort of thing up.

The pair of them approached the house, getting stopped at the door like all the other reporters when they tried to get inside to talk to the Ricks'. "Sorry, Miss Lane, Mister Kent," the officer said, reading their names off of the _Daily Planet_ press passes they flashed at him, "no press allowed inside the house. This is an official investigation, after all."

Lois was glaring hard at the young man, not used to being turned away. Clark put a placating hand on her shoulder and guided her toward the base of the tree in which the tree house was lodged. She didn't protest, but continued to glare at the door and the officer guarding it. Her eyes widened slightly when a tall, blonde woman with tear-streaked cheeks still in her pajamas and bathrobe pushed past the officer, looking around her yard frantically.

"Miss Lane? Was that Lois Lane?" She called, stepping out onto the front walk and looking around at the reporters and police gathered in her yard. Her husband, a tall black man also still in his pajamas, stood in the doorway next to the officer guarding the door, watching his wife with a look somewhere between pity and hope. A pair of detectives stood just behind him, only pity in their eyes. "Miss Lane!" Mrs. Ricks said, spotting Lois and hurrying in their direction. Lois took a few steps toward the hurrying blond, Clark following slightly behind.

"Yes, I'm Lois Lane," she said gently.

"Miss Lane, you have to call Superman! He has to help! My son! My son is gone," Mrs. Ricks was just barely restraining herself from taking Lois by the lapels to emphasize her point. Lois met the other woman's eyes sincerely, frowning slightly.

"Mrs. Ricks, I'm sorry, but Superman doesn't come when I call," Lois said quietly; Mrs. Ricks' face fell.

"But he _has_ to come…"

"I'm sure he's heard what's going on, Mrs. Ricks," Clark said, trying to sound reassuring without dropping into his Superman voice.

"So why isn't he _here_?" Mr. Ricks asked, coming up behind his wife. He looked like he'd like to put a comforting hand on his wife's shoulder for a brief moment, but he didn't.

"You never know, with Superman," Lois said sadly. Clark was hit by a flash of guilt, but drove it away.

"Can you talk to him for us? The next time you see him, for your next interview," Mrs. Ricks pressed on hopefully. The two missing persons detectives had come out of the house and were standing behind the couple, obviously wanting to get back to their questions for their investigation, but not wanting to give up a direct link to Superman.

"Yes, of course," Lois assured them.

"Thank you," Mrs. Ricks said; Mr. Ricks looked like he agreed, but couldn't find his voice. Lois nodded earnestly.

"Do you have a video tape of him? Something with his voice on it?" She asked; both the parents and the detectives raised their eyebrows. "So Superman knows what his voice sounds like," Lois clarified. Mr. Ricks immediately spun around and rushed back into the house. Clark watched him move through the walls, going to the TV stand and opening the bottom drawer, a drawer filled with tape after tape, each labeled and dated in thick permanent marker on a white label.

"This is him reading a book report at school a few months ago," Mr. Ricks said, his voice was deep and would've been soothing if he weren't so tense. "Will it work?"

"I'll tell him where to find you if it doesn't," Lois said, taking the tape and putting it in her purse.

- - -

The kidnapping of Harry Ricks was the first kidnapping of many in the supposedly safe suburban neighborhood.

Clark watched and listened to the school tape of Harry Ricks reading his report on a science project his class had done in previous weeks. He had dark skin, intelligent brown eyes, and very short black hair; he was in khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt, shifting from foot to foot as he read his from his paper, mispronouncing a few words and skipping over the 'r's more often than not. Clark had watched the tape every night before his evening fly-over of Metropolis, learning the speech pattern, knowing he'd recognize the boy even in a crowd. He'd been watching the video every night for two weeks, but nothing had come of it; there was no sign of Harry Ricks anywhere in or around Metropolis. He'd even scanned the harbor.

Harry Ricks was six years old, would be seven in another month, just after school got out for the summer. Lois and Clark had eventually gotten their interview with the Ricks' a few days after Harry had been kidnapped; Clark suspected they were only granted the interview because Superman had visited and told the worried parents he was doing everything he could and suggested using the power of the media to get their son back. The next afternoon Lois and Clark had sat down with the Ricks' in their living room for the interview. The Ricks' were pleasant people, though they fought constantly; almost as much as Lois and Clark, though what had probably once been teasing banter had turned nasty. The pair of them had filed for divorce, only continuing to live together for their son's sake; Mr. Ricks was planning on moving into an apartment at the heart of Metropolis at the first opportunity, but he wanted his son back first.

Lois and Clark's article made the front page, below the fold, and Lois had taken the second half of the day off to be with Jason.

Three days after the interview was published, another kid, this one a ten year old girl named Leslie Parker, was kidnapped. Leslie lived with her lawyer father, Zack, three houses down from the Ricks'—her mother had died five years ago. Just as with Harry Ricks, Leslie had been taken from her bed early in the morning without her father or the neighbors noticing—no alarms went off, there were no signs of forced entry. Superman was given a video of Leslie via Lois. Leslie was in the second grade, had brown eyes and freckles, and was wearing the school uniform for Metropolis Private, the private school Jason attended. In the video she was also explaining a science project, though she wasn't reading a report, instead she was telling her audience what she was doing as she added vinegar to baking soda inside a volcano science project. The volcano fizzed admirably, the 'lava' was even reddish-orange, and Leslie smiled widely.

The third kidnapping was from a house four blocks from the Ricks and Parker homes.

Clark hadn't been able to sleep, tossing and turning with a growing sense of unease he was unable to account for. After flying over 312 Riverside Drive to assure himself Lois and Jason, and Richard as well, were alright, he'd flown to the 'Napper Neighborhood,' as it was coming to be called. Mr. and Mrs. Ricks were sleeping, Mr. Ricks on the couch (as Richard had been at the Lane-White residence), and Mr. Parker was sitting in his daughter's room on her bed, staring at the wall. Clark had had to fight the urge to fly back to Riverside Drive and see Jason again after seeing the father's distress. He had only known he was a father for a few months, but he knew if anything ever happened to Jason, whether it was his fault or not, he'd never be able to forgive himself.

His thoughts had been interrupted by a shout from a few blocks away—four to be precise.

He'd been over the Van Buren home in a second, scanning the house and those nearby for anything out of the ordinary. It was two stories, bedrooms on the top floor, general quarters on the ground floor, a huge swing set in the privacy fence surrounded back yard. The only thing out of the ordinary he saw was a boy lying on the floor in one of the bedrooms instead of in one of the beds. Another boy, younger, was the one yelling.

The parents arrived in the room a moment later, flicking the lights on; Clark noticed the window was open, the curtains blowing in the wind.

"Petey—what's wrong?" Mr. Van Buren asked tiredly, crossing the room to his sons. "Why is Greg on the floor?"

"I dunno," Petey answered, distressed. Mr. Van Buren was immediately on edge.

"Petey, where's Charlie?" Mrs. Van Buren asked.

"I dunno," Petey moaned.

Clark scanned the neighborhood, looking for Charlie, but he didn't know what the boy even looked like. There were no signs of a struggling child. _He must be drugged or something_, Clark decided, heaving a frustrated sigh before turning back to the Van Buren house. Mrs. Van Buren was in a right state by the time he arrived at the window ledge, Petey upset because his mother was upset, and Mr. Van Buren just seemed to be trying to calm everyone down—there were three other kids trying to get in from the other room.

"Superman!" Petey said, excited and scared at the same time. Everybody else in the room fell silent.

"There's no sign of him in the neighborhood, not a child out of place in a five mile radius," he reported solemnly, staying outside but peering in carefully at Greg, the older boy who was still unconscious on the floor. A few ribs were cracked, and his forearms and knuckles were bleeding; whatever had happened, he had tried to defend himself. "I should take him to the hospital."

"What's the matter with him? Is he going to be okay?" Mr. Van Buren asked, his voice on the edge of panic despite his collected look. Mrs. Van Buren was shaking silently.

"He should be alright—I see a few cracked ribs," Mrs. Van Buren let loose a few sobs and Clark wanted to kick himself; she certainly didn't need to hear what had happened just yet. "I'll get him to Met. General, they'll take good care of him. They took good care of me," he added the last bit with the shadow of a smile on his face, but only the youngest boy, Petey, smiled.

The Van Burens watched in silence as he bent nearly double to fit through the window, lifted Greg easily, bracing his small body against his large chest, and walked through the house and out the front door in order to avoid aggravating Greg's injuries. "You should call the police," he said quietly to Mr. Van Buren just before taking off.

- - -

"You alright?" He asked Lois a few days after the Van Buren kidnapping. They had been assigned to the story, as it was turning into a serial kidnapping story worthy of investigative reporting rivaling police work. He was sure that Lois would never have had a problem with the story if they'd been working on it before he left. As it was, neither of them could look at the pictures of the missing children without thinking of Jason and remembering that Luthor was still loose on the world. Clark had to hide his fears, even as Superman. Lois refused to talk to Superman about it. Actually, she refused to talk to Superman about anything other than the very basic interview questions and a stiff greeting when she had delivered the tapes. Clark, though, had somehow found his way back into Lois's inner circle. The inner circle that was actually made up of just him. When he'd arrived back at the _Planet_, he'd been disappointed upon seeing Richard not only because it meant there was no way for things to go back to the way they were, but because it meant that she probably wouldn't even need him as a friend and confidante anymore. A few weeks later, though, they were Lois & Clark again, an unstoppable reporting force to be reckoned with—he could almost forget he'd ever left some of the time, and Lois did most of the time.

"Not really," Lois sighed, leaning back against the elevator wall, closing her eyes and staying still for a moment. For the first time since his return Clark didn't even hesitate to reach out and touch her, putting a gentle, consoling hand on her shoulder. She smiled, her eyes still closed. They stood like that until the doors dinged; Lois gave his hand a pat before replacing her 'Mad-Dog' Lane mask and striding into the bullpen, leaving Clark in the elevator to chuckle before following her out.

"You alright, Lois?" Richard asked when she reached her desk. He'd been sitting on it, waiting for the Lane-Kent team to arrive back, hoping to have the talk with her they'd both been avoiding for weeks.

"I'm fine," she said, looking startled to even be asked that question. Clark was hit by just how much it meant for him to be trusted with her moment of weakness in the elevator. "How're you?"

"I've been better," Richard said, shrugging, but maintaining eye contact with her. She paused, noting what Clark had a moment before and realizing how many walls she still kept up around Richard—the man she was engaged to had never truly experienced 'Mad-Dog' Lane, but he had never truly experienced the real Lois either; he had seen happy Lois just after Jason was born, worried Lois in the months that followed Jason's birth, busy / concentrating Lois while she worked on her stories, and what qualified as mildly pissed Lois when a source didn't return her calls. He had not, however, seen the real Lois, like Clark had seen just a moment ago in the elevator, he had not seen the woman beyond the façade—he couldn't; she wouldn't let him. "We need to talk," he said and she dropped her eyes to her desk, realizing that he knew what he was missing out on.

"Well, I can't talk _now_," Lois sighed, half exasperated, "Clark and I just got back from interviewing the Van Buren's, we've got to type up story notes, I have to get this tape to Superman…"

"Let Clark do it, I'll take you out to lunch."

"We had lunch on our way in, while we wrote the outline," Lois said, just stating a fact, but the sad look Richard gave her made her feel guilty anyways.

"Fine, just… fine," he said, holding up his hands in defeat and turning away. He walked down the center hall of the bullpen and slammed his door. A few of the people along the way looked back down the hall until they way Lois, her lips were pursed and she was glaring at the man in the office through the glass walls, and promptly pretended not to have noticed anything in the first place.

"You're going to have to talk to him eventually," Clark said, pulling his chair over from his desk after hanging up his coat. He nearly missed the swivel chair when he sat down, catching himself haphazardly on the edge of her desk. Lois chuckled, which was what he had been aiming for. He righted himself in the chair and fixed his notes in front of him before turning to look up at her again, the look in his eyes sobered her immediately.

"I know," she sighed, hanging up her own jacket and taking a seat. "I'd just rather not do it in the middle of the bullpen, you know?"

"He suggested lunch, I believe—which neither of us has had," he pointed out, frowning mostly because it meant he wouldn't be able to slip away to get something to eat, as the assistant editor thought he'd already eaten.

"We'll get some food, don't worry, Smallville," she said, rolling her eyes at him. "What is it with men and always thinking with their stomachs?"

"I don't know, Lois," he said, shrugging. The sentence seemed cut off and hung a bit awkwardly in the air between them as they started looking over their outline and notes—Clark had been going to comment on the fact that men were most renowned for thinking with an organ slightly lower on their bodies than the stomach, but had decided that it was far too out of character.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, each rereading notes and marking their combined outline in the shorthand that they had developed together before he had left—a shorthand even Jimmy had never been able to master.

"Lois," Clark said after a moment, looking down at their outline and the note she had just made.

"Hm?" She replied distractedly, adding another couple of thoughts to the outline.

"The Van Burens are the ones with all the kids, the Ricks are the ones getting a divorce—Mr. Ricks just leased the apartment at Bentley Place, remember?" He said, taking his pen and crossing out the sentence she had just finished, as it was no longer relevant. She narrowed her eyebrows at him and sighed, putting down her pen and leaning back in her chair.

"Sorry, I'm just… distracted, you know?"

"I know," he replied a little sadly, she gave him the 'don't you dare feel bad for me' look and he could only shrug in response. She took off her glasses and scrubbed a tired hand over her eyes; while she wasn't looking, Clark let himself pity her just for a moment, knowing all her pain was his fault. She caught the look; it wasn't a usual one for happy-go-lucky Clark Kent to wear- the one that made him look like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. A few months ago, when he'd first gotten back, Lois would never have guessed the reason for this look, but now she knew.

She threw him a look that she assumed was commiseration, which only really made him feel worse, before putting her glasses back on the bridge of her nose, using a single finger to push them up into their proper place, getting a tired smile from her partner, and concentrating back on her work. Clark sighed and refocused his attention as well. It was odd to see Lois using his own tactics on him—the dorky moves, like pushing his glasses up his nose, to get a smile; the moments of truth slipped between the figurative stone and mortar of the tallest, thickest defensive walls two people had ever built around themselves.

Twenty minutes later, Lois's stomach rumbled just as they were putting the finishing touches on their latest installment of kidnapping they'd been assigned so many weeks ago. "What do you say we go get that last interview?" She asked, glancing at Richard's office, where they could both clearly see him arguing with his uncle about his section's layout.

"I think now is a perfect time for that last interview," he agreed.

A half an hour later, the pair of them were at Tracy's again, a place Richard wasn't allowed and therefore wouldn't be able to spot them, as they were sitting in their usual booth, far in the back near the bar, where they could catch bits of the gossip and greet the officers when they placed their orders.

Just as they were finishing lunch, Lois's cell phone rang. Not an unusual thing. However, her reaction wasn't the standard 'you interrupted my lunch, prepare to face the consequences.' In fact, she listened intently to the person on the other end, whom Clark could not hear despite his abilities because of the cell phone's volume settings, threw enough cash to cover both their meals, grabbed Clark by the wrist, and ran out of the diner while still listening to the distressed person on the other end.

"Lois, where're we going?" Clark asked, waving apologetically at Tracy as he was dragged out of the diner and only getting an understanding chuckle and a shake of the head. "Lois?"

Lois didn't hear him, her ear pressed to her phone, her hand that wasn't holding his waving around in front of her, trying to hail a cab. After a moment, Clark rolled his eyes and let off a high-pitched whistle that earned him an appreciative look when the cab about to pass them screeched to a halt.

"Where to?" The cabbie asked, looking at Clark, but Clark could only shrug.

"Metropolis Private," Lois said distractedly, letting go of Clark's wrist to shove her finger in her ear to better hear the person on the phone.

"That school on the east side?" The cabbie asked, this time shifting his eyes back to Clark only after Lois was unresponsive.

"Yes, that's the one," Clark said, though his mind was miles away at Jason's school, his ears tuned in that direction. There was an enormously distracting amount of noise between the street outside Tracy's Diner, and the upper-end east side of Metropolis where Metropolis Private, Jason's school, was located.

Lois was on the phone with the headmistress of the school, who was calling on Jason's teacher's behalf. Jason had run in from recess in great distress, but he wouldn't speak a word. He had gone straight to the book shelf and crawled behind it, where his teacher, Mrs. Patrick, couldn't reach him. He'd been crying so hard that he'd nearly had an asthma attack, which had frightened Mrs. Patrick enough to call the headmistress. The headmistress had immediately called Lois, hence the rush out of the diner.

Clark focused on his son, cowering behind the bookcase, his knees pulled up to his chest with his forehead resting on his knees. His breathing was quick, just barely under control, his muscles taught; Clark knew that if the boy wanted, at that moment, he could've easily lifted the full bookcase he was hiding under in a spurt of super-strength that had become characteristic of his developing Kryptonian side since the incident on Luthor's yacht. Jason seemed to be aware of it too, and was unnerved. "Daddy, I need you," he was whispering over and over again, so low that it was clear just which daddy he was referring to. Clark thanked his lucky stars he and Lois had been out when she got the call—if they'd been in the bullpen she either would've taken Richard with her, or nobody at all.

They pulled into the drive what seemed like an eternity later. Jason was still under the bookcase, not any calmer. Lois overpaid the driver and let Clark help her out of the cab and towards the school. Lois kept his hand in hers as she booked it up the stairs and into the school, her purse swinging from her elbow.

"Okay, I'm here, I just walked in the front door—I'm headed to his classroom now," she said, snapping her phone shut. She exchanged a nervous look with Clark, adjust her grip on his so that she held his hand instead of dragging him along by his wrist. It would've made Clark uncomfortable if he hadn't been more worried about Jason.

"Mrs. Patrick?" Lois asked when she walked into the classroom, dropping Clark's hand as she headed toward the bookcase under which Jason had sought sanctuary.

"Miss Lane, hi," Mrs. Patrick sighed. She had all the other kids in the class coloring at the tables across the classroom, away from Jason's hiding spot. The teacher raised an eyebrow at Clark, who just shrugged.

"This is my friend, Clark," Lois said as dismissively as she usually did, crouching down near the bookcase and calling for her son.

"Clark? Clark Kent?" Mrs. Patrick asked, making Clark shift uncomfortably as he nodded in response. "It's so good to meet you, Mr. Kent," she said, giving him a smile usually reserved for when a person first encountered their caped hero. "I'm so glad you're back, my husband and I missed your work at the _Planet_ while you were away—you and Miss Lane make a good team," she beamed.

"Er, thank you, Mrs. Patrick," he said a little awkwardly, but couldn't help but smile.

"Jason, can you come out now, please?" Lois asked, her voice soft, her head tilted down at an odd angle so that she could see into Jason's hiding spot.

"No!" Jason cried. Clark's heart went out to his son, wondering what had put him in such a state.

"Jason, c'mon now," Lois sighed.

"He's been like that for almost a half an hour," Mrs. Patrick said aside to Clark, who just nodded.

"Jason," Lois looked pleadingly up at Clark, begging him to try something. He looked cluelessly at her and shrugged. She stood up to prod him toward the bookcase. "C'mon, if you taught him how to tie his shoes over the phone, you can get him out from under the bookcase," she pointed out. Clark ran a hand through his hair and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the case while Lois chewed on her thumb nail behind him.

"Hey, uh, Jason," he said, x-raying through the bookcase to find that his son was looking directly at him despite the wood and books between them. He blinked, Jason blinked too. "You okay, buddy?"

"No," the reply was small, his voice quavering, but certain in his words.

"What happened? Do you want to talk about it?" He asked, quietly enough so that Jason would feel like he was the only one that could hear.

"No," Jason said again, but he was shifting around, trying to get out from under the bookcase; Clark could see that his muscles were still tense, ready to react to whatever had given him such a fright.

"Are you sure?"

"No."

Clark shifted a few toys away from the base of the bookcase so Jason could climb out easier. To his surprise, the boy climbed right onto his lap, wrapped his arms around his neck, and buried his face in his lapel. Clark instinctively wrapped his arms around his son in return, turning to raise an eyebrow at Lois, who just looked relieved that he was out from under the bookcase.

"Will you tell me what happened?" Clark asked, this time quietly enough that Jason was the only one to hear it.

"No," Jason repeated.

"I can't help you if you won't talk about it," Clark told him.

"It was the bad man from the boat, the bald one," Jason whispered in his ear. "He was just on the other side of the fence, I saw him—he smiled at me."

"Its okay, Jason, you're safe now," Clark whispered back. Lois hadn't heard, but the dark, concerned look on her partner's face was enough to make her worry. Mrs. Patrick was looking at the three of them as though she were looking into the lives of her most favorite celebrities. Clark found it completely disarming, as he wasn't used to being noticed for being the man in Lois Lane's shadow.

"I called for you and you didn't come," Jason admitted, still tucked down in Clark's chest, arms wrapped around him holding tight.

"I'm here now, Jason."

"Why do my arms feel funny?" Jason asked after another moment, his arms flexing slightly where they were—his hands didn't meet on the other side of Clark's wide shoulders, but he still had a good grip on him.

"You get stronger when you get scared, I think."

"I feel _too_ strong," Jason whimpered, his voice was even softer now than it had been when he'd first crawled into Clark's lap.

"Just hold onto me as tightly as you need too—you can't hurt me," Clark said, a smirk in his voice, though his face was still shadowed with unpleasant thoughts, his ears searching for the sound of Lex Luthor but not finding anything. He was reminded of his failures in the past weeks to find any trace of the sound of the missing children and his frown deepened.

Jason squeezed his arms around his father. He was hugging him so hard that an average man's ribs would crack and his internal organs squish into little lumpy mounds of tissue, but it only wrinkled Clark's jacket a little more than normal. Lois raised an eyebrow, wondering why her son was gripping her friend so hard and worrying about the strength behind the hug. Finally, Jason sat back.

"Better?" Clark asked. Jason just nodded, still not willing to get off his father's lap.

"Are you okay, munchkin? What happened?" Lois asked, crouching next to them.

"I'm okay," Jason said, offering a weak smile.

"What happened, honey?" Lois reiterated and Jason ducked his head back into Clark's chest with an audible thunk.

"I don't want to talk about it," Jason informed them, his voice muffled by Clark's coat.

"Okay, that's okay," Clark said, shifting so that he could hold onto Jason as he stood up. Jason wrapped his arms around Clark's back again, still hiding his face. Lois continued to look worried; Clark wasn't looking forward to her reaction when she found out who had scared their son so badly.

"Can we take him home?" Lois asked, rubbing her son's back, looking pleadingly at Mrs. Patrick.

"Yes, of course," Mrs. Patrick said, nodding. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay, Jason?"

"No!" Jason said without lifting his head. Mrs. Patrick didn't frown, but she looked more concerned than she already was. Lois frowned, and Clark resumed rubbing Jason's back comfortingly.

"Enjoy the rest of the school day, Mrs. Patrick," Clark said awkwardly, shifting Jason so that his legs wouldn't bang around his own as he walked; he was practiced at carrying wounded victims, children, but he usually carried them across his chest, not parallel to himself. Well, he flew with Lois parallel to himself, but she was taller than Jason, could stand on his feet.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Lois said to the teacher before hurrying after her partner. Mrs. Patrick looked like she was going to say something, but was then distracted by the rest of her class as they mobbed around her, telling her that, according to the learning-friendly clock by the play-doh, it was time for snack.

"No, I want Uncle Clark," Jason insisted when Lois tried to persuade him out of Clark's arms to go down the steps.

"Its fine, Lois," Clark said, getting a look from his partner. He gave a shrug and a bewildered look, getting one in return.

It took several hours and a bowl of frozen yogurt to get Jason to calm down and talk to his mother. By the time she'd had the whole story, she was set on going back to the school yard and turning over every stone looking for Lex Luthor. Clark just shook his head.

"I'm sure Superman's on it Lois, I mean," he shrugged in Jason's direction.

"I guess," Lois said, obviously not willing to leave her son, but wanting to check in with the Man of Steel as soon as possible. As it was, Clark had scanned the area as they left the school, not finding anything that would point to Luthor's presence.

"It could've just been a bald man Jason saw," Clark admitted an hour later, Jason having gone into his room to lie down for a bit, which was code for take a nap in the language stubborn six year olds spoke.

"I don't think so, Clark. Jason would know who Luthor is, he'd recognize him. And he'd know better than to say that he saw him if he hadn't."

"I'm sure he saw Luthor, or at least thought he did," Clark sighed, guiding her out to the living room she shared with Richard and sitting her down on the couch. "I don't doubt that."

"Damn right."

"I'm just saying it's possible it wasn't really Luthor, just a guy who looks like him."

"It _was_ the bad bald man from the boat," Jason insisted from the doorway, glaring at his dad from across the room.

"_I_ believe you, baby," Lois said, sending a glare of her own across at Clark. "You didn't see anybody else, did you? He was alone?"

"Yes," Jason swallowed, glancing at Clark. The look made Clark's heart turn to mush, the boy wanted so badly for his father and hero to believe him. "He was wearing a long coat like last time..."


	4. Chapter 4, Part 1

**Chapter 4, part 1:**

The week passed slowly and without any breaks on any front. Lois and Clark had run out of leads for their story on the kidnappings, and neither the police nor Superman had come up with anything in their search for the missing kids. Clark was alert, now, for Lex Luthor or anybody who was known to have ever associated with him.

Everybody involved was on edge. Lois stuck close to Jason, bringing him into work to keep an eye on him at all times. He spent most of his time in Richard's office, doodling and being bored. The made Perry's tongue a bit more sharp than usual because one of his assistant editors was hardly getting any work done, but he, being the softy on the inside the bullpen knew him to be, didn't say anything.

Clark was exhausting himself chasing after the hints of leads that had come to attention as both reporter and superhero. Most of his façade dropped away, leaving a tired, clumsy guy wandering around the office, running into things and frowning at sheets of official information. Lois was much worse, as when Jason wasn't sitting in her fiancé's office, whom she was also having issues at home with, she was shouting and cursing every few seconds to keep herself from dipping into the compassionate distress she had buried deep inside. Every night at the _Planet_ ended with a few rounds of shots of whatever alcohol Lois had managed to sneak into the bullpen for whoever was left at the late hour, then Clark dragging her home and handing her off to a tired Richard before going out to do his rounds.

And then the first body surfaced.

"What's the matter, Clark?" Lois asked as he reentered the bullpen after disappearing once again. She had stopped needing excuses long ago, simply shaking her head. He generally came back these days with a heavy heart and explained it away as a complicated conversation with Superman. Lois could tell by the look in his eyes that he had just spent some time talking to the Man of Steel. Clark opened his mouth to respond but Perry interrupted, stepping between them to turn up the TV mounted on the nearest pillar.

"… _just over a half hour ago. Superman was the one to find the body here at the harbor. The name of the owner of the dock and warehouse behind me has yet to be released, but the police have said that he or she is in custody and being questioned_…" The anchor was saying, standing just outside the police tape within spitting distance of a gathering of serious-looking police officers standing around a small, covered body.

"Oh my God," Lois said, sitting down again and pouring herself another shot of tequila. She'd started earlier than usual, at nine, and by now was well on her way to a very unpleasant hangover in the morning, and Lois Lane was notorious for her lack of a reaction to alcohol. She looked over at Clark and poured him a shot, which he tossed back without a second thought before crossing to his own desk and unloading his pockets, throwing his tape recorder on the desk beside a small notepad covered in his chicken-scratch shorthand.

The press at large was jostling around on the screen behind them. Superman was there, talking to the group of police, paying especially close attention to Chief Henderson, both with grim, serious faces.

"I want somebody down there, _now_," Perry barked. "This was taken _twenty minutes ago_! And where are you people on this? Lois, you're _drunk_. Clark, you _disappeared_. Jimmy, you're… I don't even know what you're still doing here, it's almost midnight."

"Collating," Jimmy replied, gesturing to the files of old photos he'd pulled out that afternoon with the shot glass Lois handed him.

"Lane, Kent—I don't care if you're drunk—get out to that—" he broke off, turning back to look at the screen when a familiar high, stuttering voice came out of the TV behind them.

"Has the child been identified?" The Clark on the screen asked, his voice cutting through the crowd despite his unassuming manner—by the looks the other reporters were giving him, if his question hadn't been the one to get answered they wouldn't have even noticed him.

"You know we can't give you that information yet, Mr. Kent," Chief Henderson replied, a flash of understanding passing between officer and reporter before Henderson turned away from the media and back to the think tank around the child-sized body bag. There were audible groans from the press around the cameraman and Clark.

"Now we're never gonna get the story."

"Where the hell did he even _come_ from? He wasn't there when I got here…"

"Damn I gotta get sober," Lois grunted, stumbling towards the coffee cart by the printer. Perry raised an eyebrow at Clark, who put his coat on again, pocketing his tape recorder, and moving to clear Lois's desk of the alcohol and shot glasses, picking the glass right out of Jimmy's hand to be rewarded with a scowl from the photographer.

"How _did_ you get there, Kent?"

"I was talking to Superman when he heard the body rubbing against the dock supports," he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and trying not to think of the sound but failing. "He gave me a lift to the area. I called the police."

"And you still didn't get the scoop?!"

"Superman prefers to give Lois his statements and will be waiting for her on the roof in the morning," he looked pointedly at Lois, who nodded as she finished off her second cup of coffee and headed for the bathroom. "And I'm meeting Henderson at Tracy's later."

"Journalists aren't allowed in Tracy's," Perry reminded him, sounding almost bitter.

"Lois and Clark are!" Jimmy said, nearly giggling

"They are?" Perry raised an eyebrow at Clark again. Clark nodded.

"We worked the Henderson case a few years back," he explained. "They liked that we helped out one of their own, I guess."

"No," Lois said, coming back towards her desk, weaving only slightly. "They just like that we can out-drink all of them and write fully formed and grammatically proper sentences three hours of sleep later."

"Grammatically proper if not correctly spelled," Clark said, holding her jacket out to her and helping her shrug into it as she scowled at him. He ignored the look, shutting her laptop and putting it in its case with a few sheets of notes, holding it with his own as he started guiding her out of the bullpen.

"I don't need that—we'll have to come back after we're done at Tracy's to type up what we get," she pointed out.

"No, _I'll_ have to come back to type everything up after _I'm_ done at Tracy's," Clark replied, not unkindly. "_You_, Lois, need to go home to your family and sleep off the tequila."

"I don't need to sleep anything off," she insisted, scowling at the nearest desk as it rocked back and forth in her vision. "Maybe I do," she admitted, steadying herself on Clark's arm.

"That's what I thought," he smirked and she scowled again.

The editor-in-chief and photographer watched, caught between laughter and amazement, as unassuming Clark Kent half led, half carried the most stubborn woman they had ever met out of the bullpen without a protest from her.

"Clark, the buttons _light up_ when you push them," Lois said when they got in the elevator and they heard her pushing the buttons enthusiastically as the doors closed. "That's new since your trip. They fixed the elevators two years ago, still haven't put in security cameras, though—there's always too many people in the elevators to commit a crime…" her voice was lost behind the thick doors.

"That has got to be the most patient man I've ever met," Perry said, watching the progression of the elevator by means of the dial above the door. It stopped at every single floor before finally making it to the lobby thirty stories down.

- - -

Clark hailed a cab and rode with Lois to 312 Riverside Drive, tipping the cabbie for putting up with Lois's loud comments on his and the surrounding vehicles' driving ability. The man just chuckled and said that he'd encountered worse. Clark believed him.

Lois had stopped fighting the alcohol in her system, so by the time they got out of the cab she was hard pressed to stay upright and had to be supported while Clark juggled both their briefcases. She was giggling uncontrollably about the bean-shaped coffee stain on his tie when Richard finally opened the door. For a moment, the three of them were just standing there, Richard staring at the pair in the doorway, Clark looking patiently peeved while he supported Lois on the doorstep.

Getting Lois up the stairs and into bed was a joint effort, Clark frustrated that it would be improper for him to scoop her up and carry her to her bed in front of Richard despite how much easier it would be, and that Richard couldn't manage the stairs if _he_ scooped her up. Richard pulled her shoes off and tucked her in while Clark plugged her laptop in to charge overnight in the den, and they met in the living room.

"Sorry, I was out of the bullpen for the last few hours or I would've tried to slow her down," Clark said, standing awkwardly in the living room with his hands in his pockets.

"Who can ever slow Lois down?" Richard asked, sounding almost as though he really wanted an answer.

"You tamed her more than you realize," Clark offered with a shrug, getting an interested look from Richard. "This is the first time I've seen her really actually drunk since I got back, it used to be a weekly thing at the bullpen."

"It was motherhood, not me," Richard replied a bit bitterly. Clark could only shrug, turning to head toward the door.

"I've got to get to Tracy's before Henderson gets too into it to give me a proper quote," he said this almost to himself.

"Thanks for bringing her home, Clark."

"Not a problem, Mr. White."

"Call me Richard. I have a feeling we're going to be stuck with each other," he was looking at a picture on the wall of the foyer taken a few years back, Jason was still a toddler and his parents looked much more comfortable together than Clark had ever seen them in person. Clark smiled, forcing it to look natural. Richard still wanted things to work out with Lois despite how mad he was with her at the moment. Clark wasn't sure if he was relieved or jealous, so he pushed both feelings away, focusing instead on the body he had pulled out of the harbor just over an hour ago and the interviews at Tracy's he still had to get through before he could return to the docks for more investigation as Superman.

"Goodnight, then, Richard."

"See you tomorrow."

Clark nodded once and the door closed behind him. He walked nearly a block before leaping into the air and circling the city quickly once before landing in the alley behind Tracy's next to the dumpster. He folded the Suit down into nothing and stuffed it into the concealed pocket of his trench coat before walking around to the front of the building.

To his surprise, Perry White was standing just outside the door arguing with the big off-duty cop who was the unofficial bouncer for the diner. Lois had found it absolutely hilarious that a _diner_ had a bouncer the first time they visited, but she'd quickly discovered that journalists weren't the only people who weren't allowed into Tracy's and most of the rest weren't so accepting of the terms.

"You can't tell _me_ to leave, this is a _diner_ for chrissakes," Perry nearly shouted, gesticulating wildly and glaring fiercely at the unwavering bouncer.

"I'm sorry, Mr. White, but no reporters means _no reporters_. Even if you are the editor-in-chief of the _Daily Planet_."

"Peterson, Chief," Clark greeted, nodding amiably at the pair of them as he slipped past and into the diner.

"Evening, Kent," Derrick Peterson, the bouncer, replied with a pleasant smile before turning back and scowling at the now irate editor.

"You let _him_ in, you can let _me_ in," Perry insisted. "_He's_ a journalist—I'm his boss!"

"Good for you," Peterson said, smiling encouragingly. "Now get outta here. No reporters, journalists, photographers, whatever you call yourselves."

"Evening Chief," Clark said, slipping into Henderson's booth easily and smiling at his counterpart.

"Evening Clark," Henderson replied tiredly, staring across at him for a moment before finishing off his drink. "Any chance you could talk your editor into getting out of here?"

"I doubt it," Clark smirked over his shoulder at where Perry was still arguing with the bouncer. "He's just as stubborn as Lois and he usually has the authority to get away with it."

"You know that's going to be Lois in twenty years."

"Yeah, but you'll let _her_ into the diner because she's hilarious when she's drunk."

"That's true," Henderson chuckled and caught Peterson's eye, nodding once to let him know Perry could come in. The editor thanked the man tersely and stalked over to the booth Clark and Henderson were sitting in.

"There ya go, hun," Tracy, the owner, said, handing Clark his usual drink, whiskey on the rocks, with a cheery smile. "Can I get ya something?" She didn't smile quite so warmly at the unfamiliar man in her restaurant. Clark raised his glass in thanks before taking a healthy sip.

"I'll have what he's having," Perry gestured to Clark's drink and Tracy nodded, walking back around to the other side of the bar and pouring it herself, getting at look from Frank, her nephew who was her bartender nights. Henderson was silent as they waited for Perry's drink, the pair of regulars sipping their drinks in comfortable silence, Perry's foot twitching.

"The boys want to know where your better half is, Kent," Tracy said, smirking at him. Clark chuckled into his drink, shaking his head.

"She started early tonight, didn't think we'd have anything breaking," he shrugged. "And tell the boy's she's engaged."

Half an hour later, Clark had all the quotes he needed from various officers around the diner-- most were sitting at the counter that turned into a bar after ten. He got about half his quotes by entering into drinking games with the officers, most of them proposed by Henderson in the first place. Perry watched with some amazement as Clark made the rounds. He knew almost all of the men in the diner, and he didn't just know their names, but he knew a little bit about them and was able to have a proper conversation.

It was nearing three in the morning by the time Clark was getting tipsy, though he was acting just as drunk as the rest of the bar to maintain appearances. He was actually enjoying himself, able to let go more than usual because Lois wasn't there to notice things everybody else would be sure to forget by morning.

"Clark, Clark, sing us a song from somewhere not here," Henry Merven, a paralegal whose father had been a cop, insisted, squishing into the booth Clark and Henderson had made their own. Perry scowled at the man from his corner of the booth, where he was sipping his third drink; he had promised himself to stay relatively sober just to witness his meek employee's shell fall away.

"Not from here?" Clark asked, immediately thinking of one of the slow, sad songs of Krypton that he'd come across in his long years of study in the arctic—the sad song would fit the overall mood of the men sitting at the actual bar, but not the cheery faces in the booth around him.

"Yeah, like, from Europe or something—didn't you just get back from traveling the world?"

"Oh, yeah," Clark leaned back, trying to think of a good drinking song. He settled on one he'd first heard in a corner bar in Germany. He paused another moment, making sure he remembered all the lyrics in his current state before raising his voice, his gentle baritone drifting through the bar as everybody listened, a few clapping to what they thought was the beat:

"Quellen ein Scotsman hervor, der im Kilt nach links ein  
Stab am Abend ehrlich plattiert ist  
Und man könnte erklären durch, wie wir daß er getrunken mehr als sein Anteil gingen  
Er fummelte um herum, bis er seine Füße nicht mehr halten könnte  
Dann stolperte er weg in das Gras, um neben der Straße zu schlafen  
Ringklingeln diddle diddle I De OH- Ringdi diddly I OH-  
Er stolperte weg in das Gras, um neben der Straße zu schlafen

Ungefähr dieses mal zwei junge und reizende Mädchen gerechtes happend vorbei  
Und man sagt zum anderen mit einem Twinkle in ihrem Auge  
Sehen Sie den jungen schlafenden Scotsman, der so stark sind und stattliches errichtet  
Ich wundere mich, wenn es zutreffend ist, was sie nicht unter dem Kilt tragen  
Ringklingeln diddle diddle I De OH- Ringdi diddly I OH-  
Ich wundere mich, wenn es zutreffend ist, was sie nicht unter dem Kilt tragen

Sie krochen oben auf diese Schlafen Scotsmanruhe, wie sein konnte  
Seinen Kilt oben angehoben ein ungefähr Zoll also sie konnte sehen  
Und dort erblicken Sie, damit sie, unter seinem schottischen Rock ansehen  
War nichts mehr, als Gott ihn mit nach seiner Geburt ziert hatte  
Ringklingeln diddle diddle I De OH- Ringdi diddly I OH-  
War nichts mehr, als Gott ihn mit nach seiner Geburt ziert hatte

Sie wunderten sich während eines Momentes, dann sagte man, daß wir gegangen werden müssen  
Lassen Sie uns ein Geschenk für unseren Freund lassen, bevor wir entlang umziehen  
Als Geschenk ließen sie ein blaues silk Band, gebunden in einen Bogen  
Um den bonnie Stern hob der Scots Kilt an und stellte dar  
Ringklingeln diddle diddle I De OH- Ringdi diddly I OH-  
Um den bonnie Stern hob der Scots Kilt an und stellte dar

Jetzt weckte der Scotsman zum Anruf der Natur auf und stolperte in Richtung zu einem Baum  
Hinter einem Busch hebt er seinen Kilt und Tölpel an an, was er sieht  
Und in a startled Stimme, die er sagt zu, was vor seinen Augen ist.  
O junger Mann weiß ich nicht, wo Sie gewesen aber ich sehen, daß Sie ersten Preis gewannen  
Ringklingeln diddle diddle I De OH- Ringdi diddly I OH-  
O junger Mann weiß ich nicht, wo Sie gewesen aber ich sehen, daß Sie ersten Preis gewannen."

The diner erupted in applause and laughter even though Perry was the only one who spoke a lick of German. "What the hell was that?" Peterson asked from the doorway, where he was relaxing with a beer and talking to one of the girls who had wandered in at some point in the evening. Clark laughed and sang it again in English:

"Well a Scotsman clad in kilt left a bar on evening fair  
And one could tell by how we walked that he drunk more than his share  
He fumbled round until he could no longer keep his feet  
Then he stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street  
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh  
He stumbled off into the grass to sleep beside the street

About that time two young and lovely girls just happend by  
And one says to the other with a twinkle in her eye  
See young sleeping Scotsman so strong and handsome built  
I wonder if it's true what they don't wear beneath the kilt  
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh  
I wonder if it's true what they don't wear beneath the kilt

They crept up on that sleeping Scotsman quiet as could be  
Lifted up his kilt about an inch so they could see  
And there behold, for them to view, beneath his Scottish skirt  
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth  
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh  
Was nothing more than God had graced him with upon his birth

They marveled for a moment, then one said we must be gone  
Let's leave a present for our friend, before we move along  
As a gift they left a blue silk ribbon, tied into a bow  
Around the bonnie star, the Scots kilt did lift and show  
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh  
Around the bonnie star, the Scots kilt did lift and show

Now the Scotsman woke to nature's call and stumbled towards a tree  
Behind a bush, he lift his kilt and gawks at what he sees  
And in a startled voice he says to what's before his eyes.  
O lad I don't know where you been but I see you won first prize  
Ring ding diddle diddle I de oh ring di diddly I oh  
O lad I don't know where you been but I see you won first prize."

The entire bar laughed this time, able to appreciate the song in their language. Clark just chuckled, accepting the drink Tracy pressed into his hand with a nod.

"Didn't know you spoke German, Kent—I would've stuck you in International."

"That's why you didn't know I spoke German, Chief," Clark said without really thinking, relaxing and finishing off the new drink with a lazy smile on his face. Perry chuckled.

**So that's it for part 1-- part 2 should be along by Thursday night. Just FYI- I found that drinking song online, I googled 'drinking songs' and that's what came up via a link or two and the site had a nice 'translate' option and I figured it'd be fun for Clark to show a little depth. I don't own the song and I wasn't the one to translate it either (if it's wrong or weird or something, let me know... I speak a little French, not a bit of German). Thanks -- hope you liked it :)**


	5. Chapter 4, Part 2

**Alright, this half is considerably darker than the last half, but also considerably shorter (sorry about that). I suppose I should add a warning about language too, just to be safe. There will be an update either tomorrow night, or Saturday afternoon, and it should be a long one :)**

**Chapter 4, Part 2:**

"So you think you're funny, eh Kent?" Lois asked, marching across the ground floor lobby toward the elevator Clark had just gotten into. He'd been glad to find one that he could have all to himself so that he could drop the act and openly worry about everything that had happened the previous night after he'd left Tracy's.

Superman didn't have a night shift to take over for him while the day people headed to Tracy's to drink away the day's problems to the tune of German drinking songs. After he had gleaned as much useful information he could from the progressively drunk law enforcement officers, he'd been helped home by Perry, who was astonished at Clark's place of residence; then he'd gone out to chase down his leads. He had enough material to keep him in the bullpen for the rest of the week, and had already followed the leads he had as a superhero to their ends, coming up dry. He hadn't gotten more than twenty minutes of sleep and, in his exhaustion, he managed to look suitably hung-over.

All he needed to add to his forming dark mood was a moody Lois.

"No, not really," Clark replied in all honesty with a shrug. She glared. Richard was a few paces behind, just managing to catch the elevator behind his fiancé.

"Are you mocking me? Are you _fucking_ mocking me, Kent?" Lois asked, practically standing on his feet as she glared up at him. Her temper was almost enough to make up for the foot he had on her.

"What's wrong, Lois?" Clark asked, almost honestly worried. He glanced at Richard and got a clueless and somewhat pitying look. And the look exchanged only added to Lois's temper.

"Don't you go looking to _Richard_ for help, Kent! Richard can't help you now!" She raved, gesticulating wildly while somehow managing to hold onto her purse and not spill her Starbucks. Clark could smell the hazelnut creamers she always added when fighting off a hangover for some reason, though she refused to admit it when Clark pointed it out.

"Fine," Clark snapped, imitating her mood and expression for a moment. "What crawled up your ass and died, Lois?"

"What?" Lois asked, sincerely taken aback, she looked almost hurt. That was all the clue Clark needed—she was upset he'd sent her home last night, she'd wanted to help with the story and felt bad that he had had to go get the interviews all by himself.

"Relax, sweetheart," he said reassuringly, dipping back into his age old and almost forgotten pet name for her. He'd discovered early on that the endearment actually placified her, somehow reminding her of their trusting friendship despite her despise of any and all terms of that sort when it came to relationships. "Perry was with me, it was alright."

"Perry was with you? _Peterson_ let _Perry_ in?"

"Not willingly," Clark assured her. "Henderson only gave him the nod because I was there, I think."

"You look hung-over, Clark," she said, a step closer to her snappish anger than she had been a moment before. Clark narrowed his eyes behind his thick glasses.

"Is that hazelnut I smell?" He leaned toward her coffee, but she jerked her hand away before he could get a good wiff.

"I'm still mad at you. You knew very well that it would be _ridiculously _inconvenient to have an interview with Superman at seven o'clock in the morning when you set it up… what were you thinking? You _knew_ I'd already started drinking!"

"I was thinking that you'd need the interview for your article and you have a nine o'clock deadline," he said back, sipping his coffee nonchalantly even though she was still in his face, flushed and trying to stay mad at him.

"How considerate," she snarled.

"You know very well you can't throttle me, I'm too tall—save it for the guys at Tracy's tonight, they forgot you were engaged again."

"Hey!" She cried indignantly, completely and properly awake, just as the elevator doors opened with a cheery ding. The entire morning crowd at the bullpen turned to see what the commotion was. Clark stepped around Lois, bumping into the side of the door as he hurried to avoid her. Lois paused only a moment upon seeing his retreating back before reaching into her purse and pulling out a pen to throw at him. She continued to pummel him with the contents of her purse as the doors closed between them, Richard slipping out to watch from the safety of the side hall. "You're lucky you set up this freaking interview so early, Kent! I might need to stand on my chair to do it, but I _will_ throttle you before the day is out!"

Clark didn't respond, stepping out of the main aisle and into his desk area quickly to avoid the purse objects turned projectiles that she continued to pelt at him until the elevator doors were completely shut.

The office was completely silent for a moment as the elevator continued to move upwards, dinging faintly when it reached the next floor and again at the roof. Nervous chuckles followed by outright laughter on a few brave accounts. Clark, after putting his briefcase on his desk, went out and gathered the tube of lipstick, three pens, four mechanical pencils, empty inhaler, tape recorder, and hairbrush she had thrown at him. He made a little pile of all the things on the corner of her desk, pocketing the tape recorder as he went to fill up his mug.

He had just gotten back to his desk, pulling papers and folders out of his briefcase to look over, when the elevator dinged again and Lois came out. She obviously still wanted to be angry, but the sight of Clark Kent sitting at his desk, sipping coffee, reviewing notes, and holding her tape recorder victoriously aloft.

"Fuck off, Clark," she snapped, swiping the recorder out of his hand and stomping back toward the elevator.

"Your welcome, Lois," he sang back to her. "And the rest of your stuff is on the corner of your desk."

She glared as the doors shut in front of her, but Clark could hear her laughing all the way up to the roof.

He made her wait five minutes on the roof before sneaking out through the window in the men's bathroom. He found her sipping her Starbucks and lounging against the brick surrounding wall, reading the morning addition of the _Planet_.

"Is that hazelnut I smell?" He asked, floating down to be at her eye level on the other side of the wall.

"You aren't the picture of perfection yourself, there, sunshine," she said, smirking when she saw him. Clark didn't doubt he looked like crap—he hadn't slept more than an hour in three days combined, which wasn't the easiest thing even for Superman, he was stressed out about the missing kids and their families, he was worried about Jason and Lex Luthor. And, to be honest with himself, he'd drunk enough the night before to kill a regular man his size, which gave him his own mini-hangover, headachy feeling whenever he was out of direct sunlight. His hair was as perfect as ever, but he had dark circles under his eyes and little wrinkles that the sunlight couldn't quite shake and wouldn't be able to until he got a few hours of real sleep.

"Let's just say that our mutual friend from the Kansas farmland has a cruel sense of humor when it comes to early rising."

"Yes, Clark has yet to grasp the concept of sleeping us city slickers are born with… Krypton was one great big city, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was," Clark said a little evasively. Lois didn't catch it, as she was busy finishing off her coffee and reading the last few sentences in the article she'd been reading before he arrived. They stood there in silence for a moment, Lois taking out her tape recorder and flicking it on, letting it sit and record the wind for a moment.

"Tell me about what happened last night?" Clark held in a sigh, looking out over the city, his heart heavy.

"I was doing my usual fly-over of Metropolis before—"

"Sorry, 'usual fly-over?' There's a routine?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. "I suppose I have a sort of schedule so that I won't miss anything big."

"Hm," Lois made a note of it; Clark made a mental note to warn her against printing it when she made it back down to the bullpen.

"Anyway, I've been paying particular attention to the places where bodies usually turn up, just in case…" he trailed off, he didn't like thinking about his reasoning behind checking in and around the dumpsters in the darkest back alleys, the bottom of the harbor, and abandoned buildings all over the city since the first kidnapping. "I always hope to find one alive, dumped too soon—doesn't really work that way," his voice was a whisper as he let the situation sink in for the first time since he'd discovered Leslie Parker's body bumping against the far support of a dock in the harbor. Her body was bloated from its time in the river, her lips and eyelids blue, bright auburn curls that had bounced so haphazardly in the home video sticking to her face and neck wetly. Lois touched his arm gently, snapping him out of his memory. "Eidetic memory's a bitch," he muttered bitterly before squaring his shoulders and continuing. "I was scanning the warehouses on the harbor, most of them in the area are empty or abandoned, when I heard her body bumping into the dock support. She was weighted, but the current had been strong enough to pull her and the cement block far enough through the sediment for her legs to bump against the beam… Her parents were told last night, I'd appreciate it if you asked them for permission before you put her name in the article. Give them my deepest sympathies."

"Of course," she nodded, her hand on his shoulder that had been put there as a comfort now the only thing keeping her upright. "Are you all right, Kal-El… I mean, you look a helluva lot better than I do right now, but—you don't look so good."

"I haven't slept in three days," he admitted. "Even _I_ need to sleep more than that. And it isn't likely I'll be getting much sleep in the next few days either—I haven't talked to the police yet today, but with one body comes a trail to follow no matter how good the guys were who dumped her in the harbor," his tone was back to the strong, impersonal one the world was used to hearing.

"How long can you go without sleep, do you know?"

"I've never tried. I suppose it depends on the weather," he gave a half smile up at the sunshine, closing his eyes for a moment and letting it wash over him. It felt good, but it didn't do anything for the dark circles under his eyes and the slight worry lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes hardly faded.

"Do you have a place to sleep?" Lois asked, knowing that offering her bed to Superman for even the day while she was at work would be a step backward with Richard. "Besides the Fortress, I mean—even _you_ shouldn't have to deal with the cold when you sleep."

"Yes, I've got a place," he couldn't help but smile. "And it's not made of ice, but I can't sleep when the sun is out. It gives me too much energy for me to sleep, but not enough to keep me at full speed… if it were to rain I'd have myself a nap. As it is," he shrugged, "I guess we'll see how long I can go before I doze off in flight."

"Hopefully you won't be carrying anybody when that happens," she meant it as a joke, but he worried about the possibility.

"Hopefully it won't come to that."

"Thank you, Kal-El," she smiled. "I'll go and call Mr. Parker now, then, get his permission to run his daughter's name."

"Tell him I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough to save her."

"You can't save everybody. We know that," he just looked at her, his eyes shining with emotion, wishing he'd heard something, _anything_, in time to prevent the horrible fate of the ten year old looking forward to learning how to ride a horse over the summer. "I'll tell him, though."

"Thank you, Lois."

"Take care of yourself, Kal-El."

He was gone, though, up above the clouds for a brief dose of unfiltered sunlight before he snuck back in through the bathroom window and beat Lois into the bullpen. She was in a much less foul mood when she returned to her desk and packed her things back into her purse, more sedate. She called Zack Parker and got permission to print his daughter's name.

Lois and Clark took lunch with the Whites and Jimmy at a Panera less than a block from the _Planet_, eating at one of the little tables on the sidewalk outside the shop. It wasn't a particularly lively lunch, not like lunches between Lois and Clark and Jimmy and Perry had been in years past. Back then, even during the worst scenarios, they'd been able to put the story aside for an hour while they ate together. Now that they had Jason, though—and they all felt like Jason's family—everything was different.

Lois was silent, taking aggressive bites and chewing thoroughly before swallowing, staring out at the passing cars without seeing them. Clark was doing similarly, listening to everything around them and out into the city, always looking and listening for any sign of the missing children and becoming progressively frustrated when he didn't find anything. Perry and Jimmy were having a half-hearted conversation about the difference in Superman photos since his return—Jimmy insisted there was _something_ that wasn't quite the same, and Perry complained that there were so few. Richard just listened without adding anything, watching the partners in their mutual silence and wondering why Lois had never spoken of the man she was now sitting next to, stealing his pickle as though it was expected she take it, just as he had removed the tomatoes from her sandwich and put them on his own before even letting her touch it.

Their lunch was interrupted by Clark's cell phone just as they were finishing up the first halves of their sandwiches. "Clark Kent… uh-huh… no…. you're kidding… that's awful… no, no—thank you… I owe you one, Chuck, as usual…" he snapped the phone shut and stood up, taking out his wallet and putting enough cash on the table to cover himself, and Lois. "We've got to go to the Napper Neighborhood," he sighed.

"What happened?" Lois asked, already up and gathering her purse.

"The Van Buren's four year old, Pete Junior, was discovered missing this morning."

"And we're just hearing about this _now_?" Perry nearly barked.

"There were officers watching the house all night and they didn't see a thing. Hardly anybody knew until about twenty minutes ago…"

"And you just happen to have a source on the inside," Perry said skeptically.

"Cops like me," Clark said, spreading his hands wide with a helpless expression before glancing over at Lois and striding away from the table with her in tow. He used his height to hail them a cab and they were off, leaving their coworkers to wonder when Clark had slipped so effortlessly back into their lives.


	6. Chapter 5

**Here, have an even shorter chapter… sorry—next update Monday night, most likely. **

**Chapter 5:**

They arrived at the Van Buren house half an hour later. There weren't any other reporters on the scene yet, but the yard was swarming with police, the yard taped off. Clark could hear the remaining Van Buren kids in the house panicking; Mrs. Van Buren was breathing calmly and slowly as she had learned when birthing her kids while Mr. Van Buren held her hand and stared at the chair across from the couch.

"Miss Lane," Mr. Van Buren said more in recognition than greeting. Mrs. Van Buren looked up, then burst into gasping, choking tears.

"I'm so sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Van Buren," Lois said, standing frozen in the doorway a step behind Clark.

"Thank you," Mr. Van Buren said tensely, continuing to stare determinedly at the chair, "for your sympathy, but it isn't doing us any good right now, is it?"

"Right," Lois replied with a glance at Clark.

"Is there anything we can do?" Clark asked, his voice deeper than Lois was used to, but she didn't notice.

"Do you know anything we don't? Have you talked to Superman? To the police? Is there anything you can tell us?"

"We haven't heard anything more about your missing boy," Clark said evenly, still in the low, reassuring tone he had perfected as Superman.

"But you have the best contacts; you knew what—happened—here, this morning, before anybody but the police… You are the only two people Superman talks to."

"We're not the police," Lois said lamely. "We just know them pretty well."

The Van Burens went back to staring at their chair; Mrs. Van Buren's breathing still hitching in her throat.

"Have you seen anybody hanging around the house that shouldn't be there? Anything unusual?"

"Other than the herd of reporters and cops just at the edge of the property line?"

"That's really not unusual, for this type of situation," Lois said, staring at the floor as soon as the words were out. She hadn't said it to be mean or even particularly callous, but it certainly wasn't the most sensitive thing she could've said to the couple who had just discovered their youngest son was missing. "Sorry, sorry," she winced. The Van Burens were thinking, though, trying to remember faces from the crowd of practically camped-out reporters and police that had fluctuated in size since their son had been kidnapped.

- - -

Clark flew high, the usual elation of flight tainted by the lack of progress in his search. The police had no new leads, everything ran dry in a warehouse devoid of any evidence of any kind—there weren't even tax forms on the place in city records.

"Anything new?" He asked Lois when he got back to the _Planet_. It was late, the pair of them, Jimmy, and Perry were the only ones left in the bullpen—Richard had taken Jason home hours ago. Lois sat at her desk, tequila and shot glass out but as yet untouched.

"Mr. Ricks moved to an apartment a few blocks south of here this afternoon," she shrugged, turning around to face him. Their desks had been shifted around so that it was like old times—Lois's desk faced Perry's office, Clark's desk faced the elevators, the main aisle ran on Clark's left, and they shared a common space between the backs of their chairs, making conversation easy.

"I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing," he sighed.

"Good," Lois assured him. "They can't stand each other—having to live together was making it worse, so far as I saw. They kept blaming each other."

"I suppose."

"How's _your_ new apartment, by the way?"

"It's fine… haven't been sleeping there much, but there's more furniture now and the cable works."

"I'll have to visit sometime—did you finally get a new couch or do you still have that awful brown thing?"

"I like that awful brown thing. It's comfortable."

"It's ugly."

"It's not that bad."

"It's the ugliest couch I've ever seen."

"It's the most comfortable couch I've ever owned."

"I'll bring you a slipcover as a housewarming gift if I ever make it over there."

"Slipcovers are nothing but trouble."

"And you would know."

"I'll have you know my mother puts slipcovers on _everything_."

"Maybe she has the right idea, if you had any say in the furniture selection."

He tossed a crinkled post-it at her, hitting her square in the forehead and getting a glare back. He turned back to his desk and turned on his computer, smiling to himself when he realized that the simple conversation with her had relaxed him. She snorted behind him, turning back to her own computer and her game of solitaire.

- - -

A few days passed with no progress but plenty of frustration.

Lois and Clark hung around the police station and Tracy's diner, hoping to get new on leads when the police did, but there was no news. Officers around the city were ornery, ordered by Henderson to keep an eye out for the missing kids and not finding a trace.

Clark was sleeping even less, waking at the slightest sound. The old widow who lived across the hall from him, the only other person on the top floor, kept cats; he was quickly learning to hate those cats. They went 'bump' in the night. A lot. And every time the cats woke him he had to fly over Metropolis at least once and search all the places that nobody liked to look.

Just because the media was focused on the missing children didn't mean that all other crime in the city and around the world was on pause. Clark was still saving convenience store clerks from small-time robbers, putting out raging fires in forests and homes alike. It was a relief for him to be able to do some good instead of just patrolling uselessly and hovering in orbit with his thoughts.

"I can't believe there's nothing new," Lois sighed, finishing off her sandwich they'd picked up from the bistro as they walked. They were half a block from the _Planet_, the giant globe rotating on the skyline high above them.

"And yet the _Planet_ keeps turning," Clark observed, stopping and popping the last of his own sandwich into his mouth. Lois stopped a few steps beyond him and looked up at their place of work and the rooftop where she'd conducted the most famous interviews on the planet.

"It's weird, isn't it?" Lois said, looking at Clark as he looked up at the revolving globe.

"What?" Clark asked, his voice deeper, more natural, in his distraction.

"Four poor little kids have been stolen from their homes. One little girl will never get to go home," she sighed, fighting back tears; Clark wanted to reach out to her, but knew that it was the last thing she wanted. "But the world is still turning, those kids are out there somewhere, Jason's still going to school every morning, Richard and I are still fighting, you and I are still eating breakfast every morning at the Coffee Shoppe and staking out the police station all day, Superman is still an asshole…" she sighed again, this time angrier. Every time she even thought of Superman recently she couldn't help but fume, sending Clark into a further spiral of guilt as he was usually the one that received the 'thank God I at least have you, you'll never betray me,' speech. She sighed again and the anger was gone. "But that globe is still turning on top of the _Planet_. Even though it was on the pavement four months ago it's back up there, spinning away…"

Clark gave her a moment before clapping her gently on the back, taking the step between them and beginning to move on, pulling her with him until she was moving on her own.

"The show must go on," Clark replied almost as darkly as Lois's musings had been, looking down at the small notebook he kept for taking notes; he hadn't added anything since the night Leslie's body had bumped against the dock supports.

"Yeah," Lois mumbled under her breath, glancing up at the globe again as they walked.

"Lois, Clark; where are you two coming from?" Perry asked, getting out of a cab in front of the _Planet_ building when the top reporting team arrived at the plaza outside the revolving doors Clark did battle with at least twice a day.

"Police station," Lois said, stopping for the conversation. Richard got out of the cab behind his uncle, looking awkward in Lois's presence but hiding it.

"Any news?" Perry asked, hardly breaking the tension.

"No," Clark replied nearly hopelessly.

"Lois Lane?" A voice Clark hadn't heard since before he left for Krypton said from behind them. The four of them spun, Lois taking a step back and toward Clark.

"Joe," Lois said, surprised to see him. "You been hiding under a rock all these years?"

"Something like that," he said, bringing his hand out of his coat pocket and pointing a handgun unwaveringly at her. Without giving any more time than was necessary for the reporters to register its presence, he fired two shots.


	7. Chapter 6

For a moment, Clark's world was frozen. It wasn't unusual for the world around him to seem to slow down to a near standstill at times. Sometimes he just moved too fast for human movement to seem like movement to his alien eyes. This moment wasn't one of the usual moments, though. He saw, with perfect clarity, as the bullet left the barrel of the gun and whizzed straight at Lois. He heard the air bending around the fast-moving bit of metal as it rocketed straight at her heart. Lois gasped at the same moment the gun fired, realizing what was coming next; her heart rate going through the roof. His hand twitched, looping around her waist faster than the human eye could comprehend and nudging her closer to him. The bullet missed her heart, tearing through the flesh of her arm and hitting him instead. He was focused on Lois, hardly hearing the second shot until he heard the bullet pierce Richard's flesh behind where he and Lois were semi-crouched.

Joe took off down the sidewalk the way Lois and Clark had come after tossing the gun into the fountain in the _Daily Planet_ plaza.

"Richard!" Perry cried, grabbing his nephew as the younger man fell. Security officers from inside the _Planet_ lobby rushed out upon hearing the gunshots.

"Lois," Clark said, easing her to the ground. Joe's retreating footsteps echoed in Clark's ears, only drowned out by Lois's racing heartbeat and panicked breaths. "Lois?"

"What the hell?" Lois managed, looking around and then down at her bleeding arm.

"Who was that guy? Where'd he go?" One of the security guards asked, standing up and looking after Joe, a cell phone pressed to his ear with 911 on the other end as he called for an ambulance.

"Richard? Oh my God, Richard?!" Perry repeated, on the ground next to his nephew.

"Somebody stop that guy!" The security guard shouted down the sidewalk; Joe was pushing his way through the crowd roughly.

Lois was sitting up on her own, staring at the commotion around her and holding her shoulder. Clark looked down at her, scanning her once quickly with x-ray vision. She would be alright, he realized. She was holding her wound, keeping pressure on it instinctively. He squeezed her unwounded shoulder once gently before getting to his feet, leaving his briefcase behind, and charging after Joe by way of the path left in the wake of the former-informant.

Clark had spent years of his youth defining the line between the strength and ability of a human man, and his own, alien, abilities. He had spent weeks watching his father and uncles play soccer in the yard, determining how fast they could run, how long they could keep running, how breathless they were after running for an amount of time. He had done this with all of his abilities, learning the distance the average eye could see and the accuracy of that sight. Discovering what the limit of his father's strength was and learning, more importantly, how to mimic it and all the other borders.

Running after Joe, Clark was careful to not run any faster than a man of his height and build should be able to. As it was, he was more than able to catch up to Joe before he reached the end of the block. One of the younger security guards followed him, falling behind instantly.

"The hell is wrong with you?" Clark asked, coming alongside Joe and knocking him sideways into the nearest building. He carefully calculated the amount of strength to use, not wanting to break the man like a rag doll taking on a wood chipper.

Joe was silent, glaring.

_FLASHBACK:_

"_Where did he say we're supposed to go, again?" Lois asked, bundling her coat tighter around her and fixing her scarf so it puffed up more; she'd never understood how Clark could just leave his own scarf dangling around his shoulders, his coat buttoned only grudgingly. She felt like his mother sometimes, tying his scarf for him and buttoning up his coat as he scowled, usually untucking the scarf as soon as she turned her back. _

"_The Depot on 108__th__?" Clark said as though he wasn't sure himself, checking the post-it in his gloved hand. Lois huffed, picking up the pace._

"_And of course it has to be the night when all the cabbies are _striking_ or something," she growled as she stomped down the street. Clark hid a smile._

"_They're not _striking_, Lois," he said simply. "There just usually isn't business in this area this late, you know?"_

"_I don't really care, Clark. We should've had the sense to call one before we got to street level. How could you forget to do that?"_

"_Dunno," he shrugged apologetically, wanting to remind her that he had only been in the bullpen for thirty seconds when she'd thrown his coat at him again and told him she'd gotten some new information from Joe, then handed him the post-it with the address on it to keep in his pocket (because Heaven help them if she put it in her nice big purse…). _

_She glared at the pavement as they continued walking, not realizing Clark had stopped in his tracks until he was several paces behind. "What's up, Smallville?" _

"_Would it be awful of me to ask you to follow this one on your own?" He asked; if he were a dog his tail would be between his legs. "I've just remembered a package I need to send before the post office closes…"_

"_Sure, go ahead—gimme back my post-it," she snatched it, slipping it into her purse. She watched him hurry away, shaking her head; she doubted the post office was open at ten o'clock at night, but she'd let him run off—Clark was being Clark again._

_Clark flew off to attend to the hold up at city hall, "Masked Madmen Terrorize Mayor at City Hall" the headline would read in the morning. He was confident in Lois's bear and shark approved pepper spray if not in her 'karate' skills. Unfortunately, the headline beneath the fold, just under his article on the mayor's criminal encounter, was about the _Daily Planet_ reporter who had been found by her partner less than a block from the depot she'd been headed to to meet with a source. _

_Clark had finished at city hall and flown out toward the depot to catch up with Lois—he always felt bad leaving her to run an interview by herself. He changed out of his Superman suit a block from the depot and walked the rest of the way, finding her huddled in a doorway. At first glance she didn't look so good, and it only got worse on closer inspection. _

_She had a black eye, her hair was loose around her face; she was leaning to the right, her right knee bent beneath her—her left leg was sticking out of the doorway at an unnatural angle; a quick x-ray revealed that it was fractured in two place, even breaks but not what he liked to see. _

"_Lois," he breathed, crouching down next to her, hand reaching for the undamaged right side of her face and turning her head so that she was facing him. "Lois, open your eyes. Please open your eyes," he begged. He could hear her heartbeat and her even breathing, but he needed her to open her eyes._

"_Clark?" She breathed eyes blinking open blurrily to peer up at him. _

"_What happened?" He asked softly, thumb stroking her cheek, eyes still scanning her _

_body for any more damage but only finding a few defensive scrapes and bruises, nothing too serious. _

"_Set up," she frowned, then winced as the skin around her eye crinkled uncomfortably. "It was as set up or something."_

"_For you?" He asked, appalled._

"_For _us_."_

"_Why?" Clark asked, his mind chasing down various paths of thought and coming up dry. _

"_Don't know," she sighed, leaning back towards the wall, his hand taking most of the weight of her head. _

"_C'mon, let's get you to a hospital," Clark said, easing her to her feet, or her foot, as it were. Lois groaned in pain as she shifted. "How long were you sitting there, sweetheart?"_

"_I don't know. I passed out," she mumbled. He pulled her close against him, her head finding its usual spot on his collar bone despite the lack of a primary colored suit. She groaned into his shoulder, hands wrapping as far as they could around his upper arms. There were tears on her cheeks by the time she was properly upright, her broken leg excruciatingly painful. Clark shifted, Lois inhaling sharply, and lifted her off the ground, holding her with a hand behind her back and another under her knees. _

"_Ouch," Lois growled, more sarcastically accusing than anything else; then she passed out. _

_Clark took advantage of her unconsciousness and sprung into the air after a brief look in either direction. The street was abandoned. He landed as close to the hospital as he dared and jogged as quickly as he could without jarring Lois's broken leg. _

_The doctors went to work immediately, leaving Clark in the dark, pacing the waiting room with enough nervous energy to make even the receptionist twitchy. _

_What seemed like a lifetime later, a doctor finally came out to get him. It was as he had expected—her left leg was broken in two places, she had a slight concussion, and long bruises on her forearms. He was proud to hear that there was no skin on her knuckles, meaning she'd hit whoever had attacked her pretty hard. _

"_She'll be okay though, right?" Clark asked, needing to hear it in the simplest terms. _

"_Yes, it'll take awhile for her to recover, but she should pull through this just fine."_

_Clark nodded and the doctor left. Lois slept through the night, waking early in the morning to find Clark asleep in a chair beside her bed. It was her chuckle that woke him. _

"_Hey, Smallville; what'd I miss?" She asked nonchalantly if a bit groggily. _

"_Hey, sweetheart; how're you feeling?"_

"_Like I got hit by a bus."_

"_Well, the doctor said you're going to be fine. Eventually."_

"_Eventually?" Lois asked, immediately wary. Clark couldn't help but chuckled, imagining Lois bedridden for the length of time she would imagine 'eventually' to suggest. _

"_You have to stay here 'til tomorrow morning for observation, then I can come and sign you out."_

"_All day?" Lois nearly growled, flopping back on the pillows as best she could without aggravating her injuries. Clark smiled; she was very good at flopping without hurting herself. _

"_All day," he replied. She glared at him. _

"_Mr. Kent—visiting hours are over," the nurse said, standing in the doorway and glaring. The overnight nurse had let him stay because he had fallen asleep after being so worried about her. Clark nodded once and Lois gave him a look. He just shrugged and grabbed his jacket. _

"_I'll see you later, sweetheart," he promised, pecking her on the forehead and heading for the door. _

"_See ya, Clark," she said, half scowling at him as he left the room. _

_Clark left the hospital, a frustrated ball of angry energy. Joe wasn't the most reliable guy and his choice of friends left something lacking, but he'd never misled them before; they were big shot reporters, after all. _

_It wasn't hard to find Joe; he talked rather loudly as a rule. That habit made him a very good informant, but his habit of taking bribes, which Lois and Clark appreciated—but it seemed it had come back and bitten them in the ass, though Lois was the only one to really feel it. _

_The fact that she would be fine didn't even enter Clark's mind as he marched out of the hospital, taking flight as soon as he was out of sight, and landing harder than necessary, cracking the pavement a bit. Joe was in one of the dirtiest clubs in town, one that Clark paid special attention to as Superman, monitoring the alley behind it after three people had been thrown out, drunk off their asses, in the middle of winter and died of exposure. Even in the pre-sunrise stillness, the bar looked unfriendly. It was the loudest place on the block for the early hour, and usually was the loudest in the late hours as well. _

_The man at the door's name was Larry; Clark played cards with him every Thursday night. If Lois knew Clark even _could_ play cards, let alone that he won almost every time he played…_

"_Evening, Clark," Larry said amiably when Clark walked up.._

"_Morning, Larry," Clark said, his temper leaking through._

"_You okay?" A thick eyebrow raised toward his nonexistent hairline. _

"_Is Joe in there?"_

"_He's been at the bar since about two."_

"_Then I'll be fine when I get to the bar."_

"_You're not gonna cause trouble, are ya? I can't let ya in if you're gonna make trouble…"_

"_One punch," Clark promised, slipping past him and heading for the bar. Larry raised an eyebrow and watched as his normally stoic friend disappeared into the crowd, shoulders set for business, a glower firmly in place—he'd never noticed that Clark was a good inch and a half taller than him. _

"_Kent," Joe said, obviously surprised to see him. "How did you know I was here?"_

"_I'm a reporter, Joe. I know things."_

"_How did you _get _in?"_

"_Larry and I play cards," Clark growled. _

"_Oh." Clark could practically see the man picking a different bar to frequent. "So how did that tip I gave you pan out?" There was a smirk firmly in place—Clark glowered. _

"_Lois is in the hospital."_

"_Wha—?" The rest of his phrase was stopped by a large fist of iron colliding squarely with his jaw. _

"_If I ever see you again…" Clark trailed off, letting the threat hang in the silence. He turned and walked out, not even bothering to pretend as though the hit had hurt his fist. _

_- - -_

_Clark visited Lois in the late afternoon, bringing her the 'get well soon' card the office had signed for her and a bouquet of daisies. The flowers made her smile—she loved daisies. The card though, only made her grumpy. _

_The next morning, Clark arrived at Metropolis General wearing the same suit he had the day before, leaving off the super-suit so that he could roll up the shirt-sleeves after dropping his coats at his apartment in his rush. _

"_You're late," Lois said, frowning at him. Clark rolled his eyes; she was still in bed, wearing the hospital scrubs she'd been given upon arrival. _

"_Visiting hours don't start 'til ten," he said with a shrug. _

"'_Til ten my ass," she grumbled. "Remember my roommate—Miss broken collar bone? She got out of here _two hours ago_."_

"_Her husband came and got her."_

"_How does that even matter? You're the closest thing to a husband I've got—why didn't you just tell them you were my husband?"_

"_Gee, Lois…"_

"_Don't answer that," she said, and he swore that she was blushing ever so slightly. _

_It took a good hour to get out of the hospital, Lois getting a final check-over from the doctor and a wheelchair for Clark to push her out to the cab in. Lois talked from the time the doctor left after giving her instructions for the next few weeks. Clark could tell she was nervous about the whole thing, but the last thing she needed to hear was that he was worried about her. _

"_I mean, how the hell am I supposed to put pants on? Tell me that," she concluded, settling back into the chair as they got onto the elevator. _

"_I dunno, Lois. I'm sure you manage. You always do."_

_She fell into an ornery silence after that. Clark wasn't sure what she was feeling; but Lois was a very independent person—he doubted she'd let anybody but him push her around in a wheelchair, and he doubted just as much that she liked it. He let her sit in silence, not sure what to say to break her out of her funk, but searching his mind for it anyway. _

_He helped her into the car, paying special attention to her broken leg, tender forearms, and altogether soreness that he could see in the way her muscles bunches, though she didn't say a word. He wasn't sure what had happened to her, exactly; he hadn't heard anything while he was focusing on the crisis at hand, and she hadn't told him anything yet. _

"_Okay?" Clark asked when she seemed settled. _

"_Just peachy, Clark. Just peachy."_

"_Swell," he said, getting a chuckle. He handed the wheel chair off to the nurse who had accompanied them from the front desk and jogged around to the far side of the cab._

_The ride was just as quiet, Lois staring steadfastly out her window, not looking at Clark or in any way inviting any sort of conversation. _

_The problem with Lois's apartment complex was that there were no elevators. _

_The pair of them got out of the car, Lois refusing Clark's help once she was on her feet and using the crutches. They got inside, Clark holding her purse without shame, and stood at the base of the stairs. Lois frowned up at them and Clark could practically see her mind shooting off after multiple solutions. Then she glanced at Clark and he could see her resolve breaking. _

"_Do you think you could carry me?"_

"_Yeah," he said after a brief pause. "Um," he took her crutches, leaving her balancing against the wall, and set them against the wall. Taking the keys out of her purse, he handed them to her before awkwardly picking her up as he had the night before. Whatever familiarity Lois might've felt in his arms was hidden by the unwieldy way in which he carried her. She was too busy worrying about the walls in relation to her broken leg to think about how accustomed she was to his grip on her, how easily their arms settled comfortably around each other. _

"_I'll, uh, just run down and get your crutches," Clark said, not as uncomfortable as she expected him to be. She nodded from her position on the couch, where he'd set her ever so carefully. _

_He went downstairs and back up to Lois's apartment as quickly as would be believable. She was still sitting where he'd left her, still looking beat up and tired, but alright. He couldn't help but sigh with relief, and Lois noticed it. "How're you feeling?" He asked, sitting down on the other end of the couch. _

"_Better than yesterday," she admitted with a small smile. _

"_Good."_

"_I never figured you'd be carrying me around, Smallville."_

"_I'd rather I didn't need to be carrying you around, Lois."_

_She frowned; "Word at the hospital has it you carried me from the depot." _

_Clark cleared his throat, shifting around uncomfortably. Lois got the hint, glancing around the apartment before smiling at him. "Take off your shoes, Clark. Stay awhile—I'm not going to be able to move around much at all, it seems."_

"_Probably a good idea," he said, slipping off his shoes, glad again that he'd left the Suit at home with his coats. He tucked the shoes under the small end table and reclined on the couch again. "Are you hungry? I could… order something."_

"_Good plan—how about Chinese? Some really spicy Chinese sounds really good right now."_

"_Sure," he jumped up and tromped into the kitchen, digging out her take-out menu for the nearest Chinese delivery place and phoning in their usual order. Lois sighed in the living room; something about Clark padding around her apartment in his stocking feet after carrying her up the steps was incredibly attractive. _

_That afternoon was the first time Lois and Clark kissed. It was after they'd eaten and were sitting back watching a movie. Clark had gotten up for one reason or another and his tie had ended up in Lois's hand when he was close, about to sit down again; Lois's hand had pulled down until his face was even with hers and pecked him lightly on the lips._

"_Thanks, Clark."_

"_For what?"_

"_For being you," she chuckled, pecking his lips again, not letting go of his tie._

"_It's, um, what I do best?"_

"_Exactly," she chuckled, rolling her eyes at him. They stayed like that for a moment, Clark hovering an inch from her face, her hand still on his tie. Lois cleared her throat after that moment, letting go of his tie and straightening it before looking up into his eyes again. Clark leaned in again anyway, pressing his lips to hers. He was startled when she reacted as aggressively as he had dreamed she would._

_Of all the intelligent things Lois could've said when their lips broke apart, each a little breathless, was, "You smell good, Clark."_

_It was their first and only kiss as Lois and Clark, as opposed to Lois and Superman, before he left for Krypton—they didn't speak of it after that day._

Clark picked Joe up off the ground roughly, steering him back down the sidewalk toward the _Daily Planet_ plaza.

Lois and Richard had been brought inside the building to the lounge off the main lobby. Lois sitting in an overstuffed leather chair and holding her shoulder, Richard on the floor, unconscious, with Perry keeping pressure on his shoulder.

The lobby was swarming with people as Clark made his way through, Joe in tow. People from the street had followed them inside to see what was going on, and people already in the lobby were pushing to get into the lounge. Clark's less-than-happy look cleared him a path through the crowd.

The security guy who'd chased after Joe with Clark handcuffed Joe, borrowing a second guard's handcuffs to cuff him to the most uncomfortable chair they could find. The gun Joe had thrown in the fountain in the plaza had been recovered and sat, unloaded, on the coffee table next to where Richard was laying.

Clark scanned over the scene with his x-ray vision. Lois was still bleeding, but hers was a flesh wound that would heal much faster than Richard's. Richard, on the other hand, had a bullet lodged just above his heart. He was bleeding out with every beat of his heart, the muscle actually touching the bullet every time it expanded. Perry's hands were coated in blood.

"The police and an ambulance are on the way," Lois said, her breath shallow. She was pale, eyes flicking between Clark's concerned face and Richard's bleeding shoulder.

Clark nodded once; he could hear the sirens fast approaching.

Jim Harris and another EMT arrived a few minutes later, two police cruisers pulling up in front of the _Planet_ behind the ambulance.

The scene in the lounge hadn't changed much when the uniformed personnel arrived. The EMTs' focus was immediately on the wounded people. Jim went to Lois, his counterpart to Richard. Jim put a tourniquet around her upper arm and helped her into the back of the ambulance before returning to help his partner get Richard onto the gurney. He was taken aback for a brief moment by what he saw when he really looked at the other victim. Perry White, a man of Jim's own generation who had ridden in his ambulance both as a victim and a support to a victim a number of times, had blood on his hands, his face a mask of emotion, confusion. The _Daily Planet_ rent-a-cops, though better trained that mall security, were standing nearby looking helpless, talking to the officers in a distracted sort of way. Clark Kent, though, a reporter who had ridden in Jim's ambulance only once to his knowledge, holding Lois Lane's hand as she bled and cursed after an encounter with a particularly violent flight of stairs, had Richard's blood on his hands and the sleeves of his coat as well. His face was calm and confident as he kept careful pressure on the wound using Richard's own sports coat to soak up the blood. While everybody else in the room looked panicked and horror-stricken, Kent looked as though it were situation normal, if slightly bloodier than the average work day.

"Kent," Perry said after Lois and Richard were both in the ambulance. He looked torn between sending Clark up to the bullpen to finish the evening layout, and sending Clark with his nephew and star reporter in the ambulance. It was the first time Clark had ever seen the editor-in-chief look at a complete loss. Richard groaned from inside the ambulance, and Perry made his decision, tossing Clark the keys to his office. "Be sure to pay special attention to the full-page ad on page three."

"Don't worry about it, Chief."

Perry just grunted, getting into the back of the ambulance and closing the door. Clark watched the three of them with his x-ray vision until they turned a corner; Lois was sitting to one side, at Richard's head but still out of the way, Perry was next to Lois, holding her hand with eyes only for Richard. Lois's eyes were staring out the window at Clark, his face serious and his hands bloody. Richard just lay there while the EMTs worked on him.

Clark snapped out of it after a moment, looking at the keys Perry had tossed him, now a few of the keys had a reddish residue from the blood on his hands.

Resisting the urge to wipe his hands on his pants, he went back into the lobby and found the nearest bathroom to wash his hands in. He got rid of the Suit while he was in there just in case the police needed his clothes for evidence, though the case would be pretty straight-forward with so many witnesses.

Joe was being escorted from the building when Clark left the bathroom. The man had the sense to avoid Clark's angry gaze, trying to hurry the officers along though they were the ones holding his hands behind his back and setting the pace.

"Westhouse's in the lounge to take your statement, Clark," the officer holding Joe's hands said.

"Tell him I'll be in Perry's office," Clark said, his voice deeper than they were used to as his face was much more serious than they'd ever seen.

"Alright," he said, leading Joe the rest of the way out of the building before getting on his radio and telling Weshouse to go up to the top floor of the building to get the statement.

Clark took the elevator upstairs, his mind wandering down path after path at the same time. He could come up with a hundred different reasons somebody would try to hurt Lois, Richard, Perry, or himself; they were journalists, after all. Joe, though. He couldn't think of a reason Joe would have to hurt her, at least not a reason of his own. Joe had always accepted bribes, any bribe—the more that was offered the more he was willing to do. Seven years ago, Joe had sold Lois and Clark a false lead that had sent Lois to a depot to experience something she'd never properly spoken about to anyone. Joe had disappeared into the woodwork, and Clark had let him—not needing to know where the informant had gone so long as he stayed away. Joe had resurfaced twice before Clark left for Krypton, both times to attempt to sell Lois a new lead; knowing better, at least, than to approach Clark. Both times, Lois had called Clark in tears and begged him to come over. Lois had insisted Clark stay away from Joe the first time, keeping him close. The second time, Lois had let him confront their former source; Clark had found him in a bar similar to the one he'd found him in before. A cold few sentences from Clark and balled fists was all it took for Joe to get the idea. Clark hadn't let his temper get the better of him, and had returned to Lois's apartment to spend the night on her couch so that she could sleep. Joe had disappeared, then, and again Clark hadn't gone looking for him.

The only questions that remained was who had paid Joe to pay them a visit and why.

At the same time, Clark was thinking about what would need to be done in the bullpen. It was late in the afternoon; the evening edition was practically complete. The assistant editors were finishing their section upstairs. Most reporters were already gone; the copy editors were finishing up their work and leaving for the day as well. Jimmy was still in the bullpen with a few other photographers, sifting through files of photos for the assistant editors.

It was quiet when Clark arrived, everybody working at their usual tasks. Nobody in the bullpen had heard the shots in the plaza. Paul, Gil, and Mairie, all sports writers, had been leaving together to get a late lunch as their day ended and witnessed the events in the _Daily Planet_ plaza. They were clumped beside the elevator, waiting for Clark to arrive. They'd been whispering but fell silent when the doors opened.

"Is Mr. White going to be okay?" Mairie asked softly, but just loud enough for Jimmy to hear at the edge of the desks.

"It's too soon to say; they all went to the hospital. The EMTs were working on Mr. White, but Lois should be alright. They wanted to clean her wound properly and get her a round of antibiotics."

"Well, at least we know for sure one of them will be alright," Paul said, shaking his head.

"Can you guys write up something on it? There's still an hour before we have to send it in to print."

"Of course," Gil replied, steering his comrades toward their desks clumped to the far right of the bullpen, the sports section.

Clark went to his desk and set his briefcase down beside his computer, pausing a moment to breath. He unplugged his laptop and took the significant papers from his briefcase before heading for Perry's office.

- - -

Lois ended up in her very own examination room despite her protests that she was fine. Perry didn't even have the will to give her a hard look over it, simply promising her he'd stay with Richard while they fixed her up.

She was injected with a painkiller, stitched up, bandaged, and prescribed a nice antibiotic cocktail to cover all the bases. All she could think about was Richard being rushed to the ER; much the same scene that Kal-El had been through months ago, though without the stunned hush and the crowd out front.

Lois joined Perry in the waiting room a little less than an hour after their arrival, getting a weary, concerned look from her boss. Then they waited.

**There ya go-- I was even on time! Happy Thanksgiving, everybody (and have a good Thursday even if you're not from the States...)! I won't have my computer let alone internet access until next Monday, so it'll be a little more than a week before I have something to put up here, unfortunately. Hope you enjoyed this :)**


	8. Chapter 7

Clark pulled Perry's car into a parking spot outside the hospital, getting out and helping Jason get out of the back. As soon as the evening edition had been sent out, he had gone to Jason's school and picked him up from after-care, still managing to show up almost ten minutes late. Mrs. Patrick, Jason's teacher and the 'ten and under' after-care supervisor, waiting with him wasn't amused, but Jason had thought it funny that the Man of Steel had scrunched himself into Perry's little compact car.

"You looked like Mr. Incredible, Da—Uncle Clark," Jason said, hardly catching himself. Mrs. Patrick raised an eyebrow, but Clark pretended not to notice; she let it go.

"Like who?"

"Mr. Increidlbe—from the Incredibles."

"I don't think I've seen that one."

"Well, next time you babysit me we'll have to watch it," Jason said decisively. Clark smiled weakly; not wanting to break the news to the poor, sweet boy smiling innocently up at him. Jason narrowed his eyes. "What's the matter, Uncle Clark?"

"Jason," he cleared his throat; "we have to go to the hospital."

"Why?" Jason asked, his mother's stubborn streak showing through.

"Your parents are there, and Uncle Perry," Clark said slowly, using what Jason termed his 'Superman voice.'

"Why?" Jason's voice cracked, looking up into his father's identical unearthly eyes.

"There was a man," Clark explained, crouching down to be at his son's level and looking him straight into the boy's eyes, "right outside the _Planet_ after lunch. He shot a gun at us."

"Is Daddy okay?" Jason asked, his face breaking. He knew well enough that Clark would've been to get him much earlier if something had happened to his mother.

"I don't know. I haven't been to see him yet."

"Can we go now?" Jason asked, and Clark only nodded in response, taking his son into his arms and giving him a tight hug. Jason squeezed back, tighter than an average boy could've but not tight enough to stop his little arms from trembling.

"We'll go right now," Clark assured him, holding Jason to him with one arm and picking up his backpack with the other. Mrs. Patrick had a hand over her mouth, pity in her eyes; Clark nodded to her once gravely before turning and buckling Jason into the back seat.

The ride to the hospital was silent. Jason stared out the window, biting his lip. Clark could hear his heartbeat alternating between a low resting rate and racing. Clark could only imagine what was going through the boy's mind.

They made their way through the hospital, Jason holding tight to his father's hand. They checked in at the front desk only to maintain appearances, Clark hearing Lois and Perry's heartbeats in a waiting room at the far end of the building. Richard was still in surgery.

"Let's go, Jason," Clark said just to say something. Jason nodded silently, still holding tight to Clark's hand.

"Is Daddy going to be okay, Dad?" He whispered after they'd gotten away from the desk, looking up at Clark and knowing that he'd been using x-ray vision to look ahead to their destination.

"I don't know, Jason—the doctors are doing everything they can. You're mom is going to be just fine, though."

"She was hurt? I thought you wouldn't let her get hurt!" He said, still quietly, even more distressed.

"She got a scrape on her arm. She's going to be fine," Clark assured the boy, picking him up to hug him close as they entered the elevator.

Lois and Perry were sitting in the waiting room, both with styrofome cups of coffee in front of them, nether reading the outdated magazines on the table. Lois had her purse and jacket on the chair next to her; her button-up with its bloodied sleeve on top of that—she wore a turquoise blue scrubs shirt, the sleeve bunched up a bit around the bandaging.

"Jason," Lois sighed, relaxing slightly at the sight of her son. She squeezed him close, smoothing his hair and kissing his forehead before she pulled away to give Clark a hug. "Thank you."

Clark nodded, looking at her arm worriedly. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she shrugged. "I've had worse, you know."

"I know," Clark couldn't help but chuckle a little, but there wasn't any humor in the noise.

They sat down, Clark glad the couch he ended up on wasn't facing the room where Richard was on the table; he wouldn't have been able to keep himself from watching and it only could've gotten worse. Lois had Jason on her lap, Perry on the couch next to them; Clark was the odd one out.

Clark couldn't quite read Lois's face as she sat with their son, running a comforting hand up and down his back. Her eyes were worried, her thoughts obviously focused on Richard, but her face was distracted by something else. Clark frowned, not used to having trouble reading her.

Jason just looked sad.

- - -

Clark left under the excuse of finding them some non-hospital food after an hour. He hated hospitals, hated being able to hear all the rasping breaths of the sick, the drip of hundreds of IVs, the cries of pain coming from the ER.

He flew high over Metropolis, higher than usual, straying into the upper atmosphere to enjoy a brief period of silence. He closed his eyes and hung in the air, letting the stillness envelop him, breathing in the thin air and still getting enough oxygen.

"Superman."

His name, whispered miles below him, jerked him out of his meditation.

"Superman."

It wasn't a whisper—somebody was shouting for him, but he could hardly hear it at his altitude.

He dropped from the atmosphere, leaving the sound barrier crinkling in his wake. He paused a mile above the city, listening closer, trying to find the woman who was calling for him.

"SUPERMAN!!!"

It was much louder at the lower level, easily located. She was standing by the warehouse that all leads had run dry at concerning the kidnappings. Warily, Clark hovered down to her level; she wasn't in immediate danger, there wasn't any lead blind-spots nearby, nor did he feel or see kryptonite.

"Can I help you, miss?" He asked, one of the 'classic Superman questions' as defined by the citizens of Metropolis. The woman looked startled that he had actually come.

"Superman, thank goodness," she said, her heart racing. Clark crossed his arms over his chest and waited for her to continue. She was tall, taller than Lois, and wearing five inch heels that made her even taller, coming to Clark's chin level. She wore tight jeans and a strapless top, her hair looked like it hadn't been brushed in a week; her purse was at her feet, raggedy, packed to the brim with clothes and freshly printed bills.

They stood in silence for a moment; Clark waiting for the woman to say something, the woman shifting uncomfortably. In the awkward moment, Clark heard another heartbeat in the area. A child's.

The woman could tell he'd heard it, as she began shifting even more. Clark looked around, x-raying the buildings nearby for the child.

Petey Van Buren stood just inside the empty warehouse, looking terrified, peeking around the door and visibly startling when he realized Superman was looking straight at him. Clark's otherworldly eyes flashed back to the woman in front of him.

"He's the only one I could carry away," the woman explained. Petey had come out from the warehouse, taking tentative steps into the sunlight.

"Are you alright?" Clark asked, directing the words at the boy. He was looking considerably grubbier than he had when Clark had last seen him. The bottoms of his flannel Superman pajama pants were encrusted with dried mud, his bare feet just as dirty. Clark's x-ray vision revealed no broken bones; there were a few dark bruises on his upper arms and one on his right cheekbone. Whoever had hit him had been left handed.

"M'okay," Petey said so softly that anybody else would've missed it.

"Who are you?" Clark asked, turning to look at the woman as Petey came toward him.

"Juliana."

"Just Juliana."

"I wouldn't call myself 'just,'" she said with the hint of a smirk; she flushed instantly and looked away, not believing she had spoken back to Superman. Clark arched an eyebrow. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"Did you kidnap this boy?"

"No!" She defended, eyes flashing; Clark glanced down at Petey, who was shaking his head. "It was my boyfriend, Bill."

"Bill…?" Clark prompted.

"Do I look like the kinda gal who needs a last name?" She asked, a hand on her hip. Clark observed that she didn't look a thing like the kind of woman who would even require a first name, though he would never say it.

"No," Clark observed simply. Once again, Juliana wasn't able to look him in the eye. "Why did you call for me?"

"He killed that poor little girl. Ashley?"

"Leslie."

"Yeah, her. She was so sweet… always said 'thank you' when I brought her dinner…"

- - -

Clark brought both of them to the Van Buren house, handing Juliana off to one of the investigators he'd found in the front yard to be handcuffed, and walked up to the front door with Petey on his hip. The boy was exhausted, resting his head on the broad, blue-clad shoulder, a hand wrapped firmly in the red cape. It plucked at Clark's heartstrings to have the poor, still terrified boy in his arms the same way Jason had fallen asleep on his shoulder not so many nights ago as they took a late evening flight in an attempt to cure Jason's insomnia following his sighting of Lex Luthor.

Clark knocked gently, not wanting to crack the wood. He didn't make a practice of x-raying into peoples' houses, but he couldn't help but hear Mrs. Van Buren moving to answer the door, exhausted. Mr. Van Buren was at the hospital collecting their oldest son.

"Superman," Mrs. Van Buren said, her tired brain registering the superhero before the boy in his arms. "Petey!"

There was a rush from behind as the four other Van Buren kids ran for the door upon hearing their brother's name. Clark couldn't help but give a small smile.

"Oh my God, Petey," Mrs. Van Buren repeated, reaching for her son.

"No!" Petey called when he felt somebody trying to take him away from the one person he was sure to be safe with; his eyes were squeezed shut, an ear pressed against Clark's shoulder tightly. "No, no! Leave me be!"

"Petey," Clark said in the most calming, paternal voice he could manage with Mrs. Van Buren standing on the other side of the door jamb looking mortified.

"No, no, no, no," Petey repeated softly, still holding tight. The 'no's were interspersed with 'safe's.

"Petey, you _are_ safe," Mrs. Van Buren reassured, reaching to stroke her son's hair; Petey flinched violently away, forcing Clark to shift on the steps so that the boy didn't break his cheek bone.

"Would it be alright if I came in for a moment?" Clark asked, hearing the neighbors beginning to peek through their curtains and whisper about the Man of Steel standing on the doorstop.

"Yeah, okay," Mrs. Van Buren said a little awkwardly, focused on her son.

The Van Buren living room was in disarray, toys and books strewn about as one family member or the other had failed to distract themselves from the real world. The four girls, two sets of identical twins, stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching. They were awed to see Superman in their living room.

"Petey," Clark said, moving to put the boy down. Fingers clenched tight and Petey's shouts grew louder again. "Petey."

"Petey," his mother tried; he stopped shouting and his head popped up. Clark gave a relieved sigh when the boy released his death-grip on his cape and looked around.

"You're home, Petey. You're safe," he assured the boy, bending to put him on the floor. His sisters stood absolutely still in the doorway as though trying not to frighten him away again.

"Mom," Petey choked out, throwing himself at his mother and holding on. Mrs. Van Buren's tears poured down her cheeks and they were soon joined by the girls, all holding tight to one another.

"Thank you, Mr. Superman!" One of the girls of the younger set of twins said, wrapping her arms around his thigh in a hug of a sort.

"You're most welcome," Clark said, smiling. He couldn't help the relief he felt to just have found one of the missing children, even if the child had to almost literally fall into his lap.

"Where did you find him?" Mrs. Van Buren asked, standing up while still holding onto her youngest.

"There was a woman, she said she was the girlfriend of the man who kidnapped all the missing children; she brought him to the empty warehouse the leads pointed to but went dead in," he explained, wincing inwardly at his choice of words regarding the leads.

"Petey, did you see your brother? Is Charlie okay?" Mrs. Van Buren asked, looking between her son and Superman. Clark could only shrug helplessly, but Petey nodded.

"Me an' him were in the same jail cell," Petey explained in a small voice.

"Was he okay?" Mrs. Van Buren's voice was very tense.

"He didn't have any broken bones or anything," Petey shrugged. "They hit us a lot, though, and he was there longer than me."

Mrs. Van Buren moaned, clutching her son tighter for a moment before setting him on the floor to look him over, taking in his bruises. She glanced up at Superman, fingers lightly touching the bruises on her son's face.

"Nothing's broken, no internal bleeding," Clark assured her, features inscrutable.

"Good, good," Mrs. Van Buren mumbled to herself.

"Mrs. Van Buren, it would be a good idea to take him to the hospital and let the doctors examine him. And let the police get a formal statement from him."

"Right," Mrs. Van Buren agreed distractedly. "Thank you, Superman."

Clark nodded once and opened the front door and shooting off into the sky.

- - -

"Jeez, what took you, Smallville?" Lois asked when Clark reentered the waiting room an hour and a half after he'd left. Clark put the paper bag full of Chinese take-out cartons on the table on top of the magazines and handed Perry the rough draft of an article on Petey and Juliana.

Lois raised an eyebrow at him, but the look behind his eyes told her to wait. Perry leaned back into the couch as he read, eyes greedily devouring the words. Once he'd finished he glanced up at Clark, handing the sheet absent-mindedly to Lois. Clark looked up from where he was crouched across the table, helping Jason load his plate with snow peas.

"How'd you get the scoop?" Perry asked. He sounded tired, but very interested.

"Superman," Clark said, wanting to kick himself. He couldn't keeping using himself as a press contact; it would draw attention… and Lois's wrath. Despite her prolonged anger at the superhero, she still expected, and was actually polite during, their interviews.

They ate quickly, Jason amusing himself by tasting foods he was no longer allergic to while the adults discussed the still-breaking story.

"Mr. White?" The doctor asked, looking at Perry, who nodded. They'd finished dinner and had the draft sitting between them, still discussing while Jason colored. The doctor was younger than Clark had expected after listening to his voice, the authority in his voice and the sureness of his orders, during the surgery. He was tallish with dark eyes and blue scrubs. "I'm Dr. Sterner, I was your nephew's surgeon," he explained. Perry nodded without saying anything. Lois and Jason were both frozen in place, listening. "The surgery went well; we were able to get the entire bullet out without damaging his heart. He's resting now, still anesthetized, but you can come and visit him, if you'd like."


	9. Chapter 8

Lois could only remember feeling as lost as she did when Clark brought Jason to the hospital once before in her life, when she'd visited the Man of Steel in the same hospital.

Clark had walked into the waiting room, holding Jason close to him, comforting him. It looked so natural.

She told herself that the welling of comfortable feelings that had filled her had come because her son was there. But she knew better.

_When did this happen?_ She asked herself, not able to look at Clark as he stood, leaving to bring them all food. He knew how much she despised the stuff, having had to force down so many meals in the past when doctors had insisted she spend the night for observation. _He's always been my best friend. The only one who can keep up with me on a professional level. My partner. So when did I fall in love with him?_

She looked at Jason for awhile, stroking his hair as he sat and worried about this father. She sighed to herself over her predicament, getting a sympathetic look from Perry. _Shit. I can't even feel properly sad about the right things! Richard, the man who has been so kind to me, loved me and my son, given us a home and a sort of normality, is in surgery right now and all I can think about is another man's son and my best friend! _

She frowned, wallowing in her guilt. _Shit._

- - -

Clark walked into the bullpen, noting the overall subdued atmosphere of the place.

It had been a week. Richard was still in the hospital recovering. He was out of it due to the medications most of the time; pain meds, antibiotics…

Perry had returned to work the day after the shooting, though he'd suggested Clark and Lois take a few days. Clark, a personality so unlike what his coworkers were used to poking out for the briefest of moments, had reminded Perry that he'd been the one to prepare the evening _Planet_ for print the afternoon of the shooting and scooped all other papers in the area on the Van Buren boy that very same evening. Lois, in an out-of-character moment of her own, had accepted the suggestion, telling them that she thought it would be better for Jason at her fiancé's bedside.

"Kent," Perry called, a little less gruffly than he had in years past. Clark dropped his briefcase on his chair and headed for the editor-in-chief's office, noticing that the blinds were down and closed, a shadow the only evidence of Perry's secret visitor. Clark x-rayed through the curtains and almost forgot to keep walking; Bruce Wayne stood, looking like the suave, impatient, playboy he was supposed to be, in the middle of Perry's office. He was looking back at Clark as though he could see through the blinds, too;

Clark had to resist the urge to smirk or roll his eyes—Bruce had always been able to do that sort of thing and, once he'd learned how it perplexed his friend, he'd done it more often.

"You wanted to see me, Chief?" Clark asked, his pitch too high, his smile too big. Bruce had to turn away to roll his eyes without Perry seeing.

"Yeah, close the door," Perry said, walking around behind his own desk and looking at the guest.

Clark did as he was told, turning around to find Bruce facing him once again, and Perry looking curious. "Mr. Wayne," Clark said, not sure how Bruce was planning on playing the meeting.

"Clark, it's been too long," Bruce said, holding his hand out warmly, practically radiating charm. Clark shook his friend's hand, raising the eyebrow farthest from Perry ever so slightly. Bruce was good at reading people, at picking up those little things other people noticed; it was part of being both a billionaire, and the Dark Knight.

"Indeed, you should make a point to stop in Gotham more often, swing by the mansion," Bruce said, releasing Clark's hand, eyes dancing; it was common banter between Batman and Superman, marking their territories—usually, though, it was threatening a slow and painful death if borders were crossed without permission. Bruce's eyes were dancing with humor; he'd be laughing if he weren't putting up a show for the old editor.

"Not all of us have p-private helicopters to fly off wherever we please at a moment's notice," Clark smiled his too-many-teeth grin; Bruce's eyes sparkled all the more.

"Superman's been talking to you a lot lately; maybe you could ask him for a lift."

Clark shook his head, glancing at his boss, looking for the purpose of Bruce's visit.

"I wasn't aware the two of you had met," Perry said, shuffling papers around on his desk.

"Yes, years ago," Clark said, able to think of a social event he had covered in Gotham with Cat Grant, the society column writer, when her usual escort had had the flu, where they could've met.

"In Tibet," Bruce explained. _Okay, I guess we're going with the honest truth…_ Clark thought, nodding his agreement. Perry's eyebrows hitched up toward his receding hairline. "I was presumed dead at the time."

"Is that so?"

"I didn't know I was befriending a journalist, at the time," Bruce explained, as he was notorious for blowing off reporters' requests for interviews, leaving that to his CEO Lucius Fox, or other associates. He'd even shuffled PR duties onto his butler on occasion. All part of his image.

"Nor I a millionaire."

"Billionaire."

"Whatever."

Bruce scowled. Perry's eyebrows rose further up his forehead.

"That will be all Mr. White," Bruce said dismissively, turning to face Perry full-on.

"It will? What?" Perry said, not used to being dismissed from his own office.

"I just need a moment to talk to Clark in private."

"Right, well," Perry scowled, mumbling the entire way out. Clark examined his shoes, x-raying through them to look at the red boots hidden inside, until Perry was gone from the room.

"Bruce, he's the _editor-in-chief_! You can't just kick him out of his office!"

"I just did."

"Bruce," Clark admonished, rolling his eyes.

"It fits the persona," he waved an arrogant hand dismissively, drawing a chuckle from his long-time friend. Clark nodded his head in an 'I suppose' kind of way and waited for Bruce to move on. "I have some information for you—you won't like it."

"And you couldn't call me? I have four phone numbers, you know, and all of them have voicemail. And three different email accounts."

"You will find your inboxes very full, and not just from me, I think," Bruce answered, dropping his façade and getting serious. Clark adjusted his glasses, raising a curious eyebrow. "And you didn't answer any of your phones and I didn't want to leave a voicemail."

"Alright," Clark prompted. Bruce opened his suit coat and pulled a folded up poster from the inside pocket, unfolding it just-so so that Clark couldn't x-ray through the paper and get a glimpse of the image. _I've known him too long._

"These are all over the Narrows and the other less stand-up back alleyways of Gotham," Bruce said darkly, handing it over. The poster was printed on black paper and featured Lois and Clark's black and white press pass photos screened red. The lettering was white, standing out against the darker colors. "_DAILY PLANET_ REPORTERS WANTED DEAD—$1 MILLION REWARD" was in bold across the top. Beneath the photos was a paragraph with details. Lois and Clark's Metropolis addresses, the address for the _Daily Planet_, a short list of possible hostages to lure one or both of them out including Perry, Richard, and Jason. Clark was relieved to see that whoever had made the posters was unaware of the Kansas farmhouse where his mother lived, but that only made the situation so much better. There was a warning in all caps along the bottom edge to beware of Superman, as both reporters were known contacts.

"All over?"

"All over," Bruce said, nodding gravely. Clark sighed.

"They're sure to go after kryptonite, with that warning," Clark indicated the bottom line.

"There's already a black market for the stuff set up in Gotham," he said darkly. "We've cracked down on it hard, there really isn't that much available, after all. There's lots of fake stuff mixed in with a little bit of real rock."

"Great," Clark sighed, unconsciously rubbing the scar on his back. Bruce noticed.

"That's not even the scary part," Clark looked up from his second examination of the poster to listen. "The scary part is that whoever's supplying it is putting the real stuff in the hands of the people who actually have a chance at collecting."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean somebody really wants you guys dead."

"Jason saw Luthor at his school a couple of weeks ago."

"I thought he was dead."

"I'd _hoped_ he was dead," Clark sighed. "No such luck."

"And he knows, too," Bruce said to himself, though Clark nodded anyways. "What the hell have you two been getting into that would cause _this_?" Bruce asked, indicating the poster and beginning pacing the office like a caged beast. Clark was still as he thought.

"We're mostly working on fluff pieces to fill space between breaks in the kidnappings case," he said after a moment. "Unless somebody's really unhappy about my article on the refilling of that crater in Centennial Park, or Lois's article on the new stone façade going up at City Hall to cover up the New Krypton damage…" he shook his head.

"So somebody involved in the kidnappings."

"We suspected _Luthor_ for the kidnappings at first."

"Why did you stop? Especially if he showed up at Jason's school. And the kryptonite."

"He comes after me personally. His vendetta is against me."

"If he knows Jason is your son he could be going after children to make you nervous," Bruce paused in his steps to speak.

"That doesn't make sense."

"Alright," Bruce resumed his pacing. "Any other enemies?"

"The criminal population in general so far as Superman is concerned," Clark shrugged. "Could be any number of obscure people. But they're threatening Lois and Clark… All the people we've pissed off are in jail, really. Except for this new kidnapper."

"Whoever it is has a wide reach," Bruce said, shaking his head. "These posters were in _Gotham_, not anywhere near Metropolis."

"It's not _that_ far."

"You know what I mean," Clark nodded, sitting down. Bruce paced the length of the room again before sitting down as well.

"I'll start with people Lois and I have put in jail that had the connections to put something like this out there and the money, if not the reputation, to have a million dollar hit out," Clark sighed, trying to think of how to tell Lois. Bruce nodded, thinking.

"How is Mr. White doing?"

"He's recovering."

"I'm surprised at how fast the word got out."

"It's not a good sign."

There was a moment of silence between them.

"If I weren't who I am, I'd be dead," Clark said softly. "And so would Lois."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I barely got Lois out of the way of that bullet, and it hit me instead of her. If it hadn't have hit me, it would've hit Richard. The two bullets would've hit me and Lois if—you know," he sighed. "And then: mission accomplished."

"Journalism is a dangerous sport."

"I got into journalism so that I could make a difference by bringing information to the masses without drawing much attention to myself," Clark said, chuckling humorlessly. Bruce smiled, standing and clapping him on the back.

"You're too good of a journalist not to get noticed."

"Well, gee thanks, Mr. Wayne."

Bruce laughed. One of his honest laughs, too, that brought a smile to Clark's face.

"Only a guy from a different planet would even…" he trailed off, chuckling. Clark smiled back, standing as well. "I guess I'll take my leave; I've got a chopper waiting on the roof."

"That's a treacherous spot for a helicopter," Clark warned.

"A good place for a debut, though."

"Indeed."

"Watch out for yourself, Clark," Bruce said, honestly, holding out a hand for shaking.

"You too," Clark said, shaking the hand before opening the blinds. Bruce was fully back in his billionaire persona, strutting out across the bullpen and smiling genteelly at the ladies whose eyes he caught.

Perry was back in the office seconds later, Clark still fighting with the blinds. He was losing, too.

- - -

After an hour's discussion with Perry, Clark was finally allowed to leave the office. Perry was torn between excitement that his reporters were onto something huge, expectant that _Planet_ sales would soar with the added press such a public death threat would make, and fear for his reporters. He was surprised at how calm Clark was about it, how calculating the man was; he'd expected near unintelligible stuttering and panic but he'd gotten a half dozen different options and courses of action, and a clear refusal to speak another word about his 'acquaintance-ship' with Bruce Wayne.

Leaving the office, Clark went straight to the copy machine and copied the poster. The shadows the machine left around the red letters and in the photos of the familiar faces made the poster all the more menacing. He posted one of the copies, almost victoriously, on the outer cubicle wall of his and Lois's desk area, and another on the glass wall of Perry's office. Perry looked at the back of the poster solemnly before turning back to his work.

Clark sat down at his own computer, ignoring the murmurs passing around the office as the machine booted up. His inbox dinged, altering him to twenty-two new emails. Six of them were from Bruce) the last reading simply: TURN ON YOUR DAMN PHONE) and the rest were from various sources from around Metropolis. Most were warning him of the hit, a few inquired into his well-being, not having heard the whole story of the shooting, a week previous, now.

Once he'd emptied his inbox, replying to the emails as briefly as possible, assuring his contacts that he was alright and that Richard and Lois were both recovering, he sat back in his chair with a blank word document waiting and settled into his thoughts. He'd had a week's worth of days spent at the police station in both guises listening in as detectives interviewed Juliana, peering through the walls and across town to the hospital, where Richard was still abed with Lois and Jason at his side, to the other end of town where the Van Burens celebrated the return of their youngest son. The safe return of just one of the kidnapped children brought hope back to the Napper Neighborhood and all families involved.

Surrounded by the comfortable chaos of the bullpen, Clark let his thoughts drift back to a line of thought he'd been following since he'd come across Juliana. Bill. Who the hell was this Bill person? He'd been through every Bill he knew multiple times—Bill Ganelon, from Smallville all those years ago; Bill Henderson, the dead father of Chris Henderson, Metropolis chief of police; Billy Bennett, one of Jason's classmates; Bill Engvall, who he didn't actually _know_ …

He knew a lot of Bills, none of whom he could suspect of the accused crimes.

Clark sighed in his exasperation and closed the blank document. He needed to go flying.

Everything was quieter out over the open ocean, the waves rolling below him, crashing and rising in a way that was completely random and ordered at the same time.

Juliana's story had come through over the course of her extensive interview with the Met. Police dept. She had been born and raised in Gotham, moving to Metropolis at twenty-one to get away from the corruption. Or at least that was what she'd told the detectives—a search into the records revealed that Juliana Tholdus had been Lewis Falcone's girlfriend of sorts until the youngest son's father had been jailed by the newly arrived Batman; that was seven years ago. She'd fled the city of corruption and not looked back. It seemed she'd tried to start a new life in Metropolis, holding down a completely above-board job as a secretary in one of the office buildings downtown, only a few blocks from the _Planet._ Unfortunately, a man who'd lived in her building until he'd been arrested for dealing had gotten her hooked on meth. She'd drifted into the Metropolis underworld, getting evicted before her dealer was arrested, and ending up at a seedy club as a 'waitress.' It was there that she had met Bill, a married guy having trouble at home and looking for an outlet. She'd latched onto him, at first because he tipped well, then because she'd fallen in love with him. He helped her through withdrawal when she couldn't pay for her habit any more, and then kept her clean. She'd been more than willing to help him out with whatever he asked, not asking and preferring not to think about what he wanted with the children he kidnapped. He'd arrived at her apartment, the new one he'd helped her get after she'd gotten off the drugs, at the break of dawn on May 26th with Harry Ricks in his arms, unconscious. In the course of the week, Juliana had terminated the lease on her apartment and moved out, putting most of her things in storage, warehouse sixteen by the bay, locker three. They'd ended up in what she described as a bunker, eating canned foods, smoking, and watching the news. Bill was the only one who left, never telling her where he went; he came back with more canned goods, more thug friends to keep an eye on the growing number of kids stashed in the back room, and complaints about his wife and the man he called 'the Boss.'

What tore into Clark was that she had, after identifying the four kids from the Napper Neighborhood as those she'd been feeding lukewarm canned beans twice a day, had asked, "What about the rest of them?"

Apparently there were eight other kids hidden away in an underground, probably lead-lined, bunker suffering from malnutrition and secondhand smoke, getting beaten whenever they spoke louder than a whisper.

The detectives, after a brief, horrified conference with Henderson outside the interrogation room, had brought in a book of photos of children reported missing. Juliana had been able to identify two of the unknown kids from the book. The others, however, were nameless and faceless—she hadn't been able to look the kids in their faces and therefore couldn't provide more than a very basic description.

Emily Thomas, six years old, missing since May 29th. She was a blonde girl, tall for her age, brown eyes. She lived with her grandparents a few blocks from Lois and Richard. The other that Juliana had identified from the pictures the detectives had was a boy, Todd Evans. He was ten, short, blue eyes, light hair. Juliana said he stood up for the other kids, as he was the oldest, and took the most beatings for it. His nanny, Meredith Slater—an honor roll student just graduated and preparing to go to an Ivy League school next semester, had reported him missing on June 15th when he hadn't made it home from school. He went to Metropolis Private, just like Jason. His parents were both doctors at Met. General.

Neither of those cases had been linked to those from the Napper Neighborhood because the method was completely different. Todd had disappeared on his way home from school—he walked, living only a few blocks away in a safe neighborhood. Emily had been taken late at night, kicking and screaming; her grandparents had been restrained while the kidnappers snatched their granddaughter and drugged to unconsciousness as the kidnappers left.

Clark wanted to kick himself—he'd been focusing on the Napper Neighborhood the night Emily was taken, keeping an ear out in the direction of Riverside Drive without paying attention to the sounds in-between. He would have caught them in the act if he'd been a little more thorough.

- - -

Clark returned to his desk after his less-than-calming flight over the Atlantic.

When he walked into the bullpen, Perry looked more relieved than Clark had ever seen him; his face practically screaming 'Thank God you didn't die!' before the elder man schooled his features and returned to his work.

Smiling to himself, Clark hacked into Metropolis PD's network to check up on a few less-than-friendly figures from his and Lois's joint articles of the past. After an hour of scanning through visitor logs and other notes, he seriously doubted anybody in the joint was responsible for the hit. He might suggest to Henderson that a few drug tests would be more than fruitful for a few of them, but…

Closing out of his illegal search, he pulled up a different search engine and started looking for Bill; simply typing the name into a google search bar brought 306,000,000 hits. Very unhelpful.


	10. Chapter 9

**Alright, FINALLY another chapter. And it's pretty long too :) Enjoy:**

Lois sat in the passenger seat of her own car, staring out the window in a distinctly surly fashion. Jason was in the back seat, looking out his own window in a much better mood, and Clark was driving.

Clark had arrived in Richard's hospital room with dinner, as usual. Jason had been more than excited to see Uncle Clark, telling him about his day at school in elaborate detail. Lois hadn't been surprised that Clark had listened to every detail as though it were the most important thing to happen to him all day. It was adorable. If Richard had any reaction, it didn't show. He just ate his hospital-provided meal, making slightly loopy jokes about how unfair it was that Lois, Jason, and Clark were eating delicious Boston Market dinners while he was stuck with hospital jello.

After dinner, Clark had gotten serious. He'd waited 'til Jason had settled into his coloring book in a not-incredibly-comfortable chair to one side before showing the other two reporters the poster. Lois had flown into Mad-Dog-Lane mode, startling her fiancé but not her partner. Lois had been all for rushing into work and writing a scathing article, calling out the person who'd put the hit on them, among other things. Richard had just stared, open mouthed, as she glowed in righteous anger. Clark, on the other hand, had silenced her with her own name said in just the right tone and accompanied with just the right look.

"That's not going to help us now, sweetheart," he said simply once he had her attention. Deflating slightly, Lois had retaken her seat and studied the poster for a moment. Clark had gone on, presenting the research he'd compiled, telling them the poster had come from a source in Gotham. The original copy was with the police, being analyzed and whatnot. "Perry wants us out of the public eye," he finished.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lois asked, an air of foreboding settling over her.

"That means neither of us is allowed to leave the bullpen without a babysitter, we're not allowed to make a scene while we're out, and we can't stay at our own places. The addresses are on the posters," he cleared his throat. "I'm supposed to take you to your mother's."

"No," Lois said simply, stubbornly, her tone leaving no room for argument, but Clark argued anyway.

"He's worried about you, the least you can do is humor him and stay at Ella's for awhile…"

"No, Clark," Lois insisted.

"Well w-why not?"

"Because my _father _lives with my mother."

It had been a struggle, but Clark, with some help from Richard, had eventually talked Lois into spending some time in her childhood bedroom—Perry had called ahead for them and arranged everything.

They pulled into the driveway, Lois's frown deepening momentarily before she schooled her features and got out. It was sunset, the sky painted incredible hues of golden orange and red and purple. Clark was tempted to rise into the clouds for a view of the sun reflecting off the top of the clouds, but helped Jason out of the back seat instead. Jason looked up at the sky for the briefest of seconds, his face displaying all the longing to be airborne that his father was feeling. Ruffling Jason's hair, Clark reached around him to get the overnight bags out of the trunk.

"Lois, honey, are you alright?" Ella Lane asked, coming out of the house. She hadn't changed much since Clark had last seen her—Lois had dragged him along to family dinners every month alternating between the Troupes and the Lanes. He'd enjoyed dinner with the Troupes much more, mostly because Sam Lane usually thought of a reason not to attend.

"I'm _fine_, Momma," Lois insisted, walking up the front path and giving the elder woman a hug. Mrs. Lane was 5'3", just like her daughter, heavy-set, very _un_like her daughter, with gray hair with a hint of brown remaining; she wore a blue dress with tiny white flowers and house slippers. Lucy was very much like her mother, matriarchal though she looked more like Lois than her mother—Clark could never see Lois hosting Christmas for the Lanes, though he hadn't expected to see her become a mother either. He figured that Lois would turn out very much like her mother in the end, if she'd ever let herself settle into retirement at all.

"Are you sure, dear? You look so…" Ella waved her hands around a bit in search of a word, "distraught."

Lois chuckled, pulling away and looking back at her son. "We're alright," she shrugged.

"How about you, Clark, dear?" Ella asked, turning her eyes toward Clark.

"I'm fine, Ella—how have you been? It's been a long time."

"That's very true," Mrs. Lane agreed, examining him carefully from afar. "How's your mother?"

"She's well, thank you."

"Is that that Kent fellow I hear out there?" The voice of Sam Lane asked from inside the doorway. The General appeared, tall, bald, unhappy, in pressed khaki slacks and a green button-up.

"Yes, sir," Clark called back amiably.

"I thought you died," Sam observed. Lois visibly flinched.

"Don't be silly, General Grampa; Uncle Clark can't die—he hasn't finished being alive yet," Jason said, rolling his eyes at his grandfather as his grandmother scooped him up into a hug. The other adults chuckled, Clark shouldering Lois's bag to get Jason's.

Sam went back into the house with a grunt and a glance at his daughter.

"Well, don't stand out in the evening like ducks," Ella said, motioning toward the door, "c'mon inside."

"Like ducks?" Clark mouthed to Lois who just shrugged and gave him a 'don't say a word' look. Jason took off happily, following his grandfather into the house.

They went inside, Clark stopping in the foyer and putting the bags down to one side. Jason kicked off his shoes and headed into the house in search of his grandfather—as the only grandson, Sam always had trinkets lying around to show and tell Jason about, small gifts and whatnot. Lois followed at a more subdued rate, obviously dreading her return to her father's house.

"Well, here are your keys," Clark said, handing them over to Lois.

"I thought you'd hold them hostage," she chuckled, sticking them in her purse.

"I figure you'd just borrow your parents' anyway," he shrugged; "And my ride should be here any minute."

"You called for a cab?" Lois asked, looking decidedly abandoned.

"No; I wish," Clark chuckled. "Perry d-decided I would be staying with him and Alice until this whole thing gets figured out."

"Lucky you."

"I doubt it," Clark couldn't help but mumble, getting a look from her. He couldn't help but dread the time he would be spending with the Whites. Not only had Perry been giving him odd looks since his return, and spending an undetermined amount of time under his roof, under careful watch no doubt, with a very short list of believable excuses was not something to be looked forward to.

"Uncle Clark, Uncle Clark!" Jason said, rushing into the room and grabbing his father by the hand. "You've gotta see what General Grampa got me!"

"Well—what—Jason—" Clark half protested as he was dragged out of the foyer and into the living room. Sam Lane sat on the couch, a thick book in his hands. He glowered at the man being dragged into the room by his grandson, though the glower was less intense than the usual look. Something about the geeky reporter nearly doubled in half as the almost five year old pulled him through the room. The identical smiles, though Clark was trying to hide his, didn't go unnoticed by Lois as she followed them into the room, though the General was too busy scowling.

"Lookit, it's got pictures of all the places you went on your trip!" Jason said, snatching the book from his grandfather's hands and setting it on the coffee table between the three of them. "Tell me the story about the ninjas in Tibet again! No," he flipped through the pages 'til he found a picture of the pyramids of Egypt; "Tell me about Egypt!"

"W-well—" Clark stuttered, trying to think of what to say. He'd last been in Egypt two weeks previously sorting out a ten car pile-up in Cairo. On his trip around the world in his early twenties, Clark had visited all the sights of the city, toured the pyramids and museums and crypts.

"Kent!" Perry's voice echoed from the foyer, saving Clark from telling a story in front of Lois and the General.

"Ch-chief," Clark said, turning to see his boss walking into the living room.

"Perry," General Lane said, almost friendlily, before turning sour. "We were just about to hear Kent's story about Egypt. Join us."

"Unfortunately, we're on a tight schedule," Perry said, looking at his watch. "We have an hour and a half to get to Kent's apartment, get a duffel bag packed, and get out across the river to my place or Alice is gonna flip a lid. She's making some stuffed pasta something or another."

"You better get going, Kent; you wouldn't want Alice to—"

"Daddy, leave him alone," Lois grumbled. Clark just smiled amiably, ruffling Jason's hair again.

"Next time, Jason—you've heard all my good stories already, anyway."

"G'nite, Uncle Clark," Jason got up and hugged him around the knees. "G'nite Uncle Perry," he ran across the room and hugged Perry around the knees too.

"See ya tomorrow, kiddo," Perry said easily.

"I get to come into the bullpen?" Jason asked excitedly—all his favorite people worked at the _Daily Planet_. The General frowned, his opinion being that Lois and Richard should put him in daycare with kids his age instead of raising him at their workplace full of pushy, foul-mouthed journalists. He certainly had never been quiet about his opinion, either.

"No, sorry," Perry smirked. "Your Nana invited us for dinner, though," Perry smirked. "C'mon, Kent."

"Uh, see you tomorrow, then," he said, stepping away from the coffee table and toward Lois. For a second, she thought he was going to peck her on the cheek, but then he just squeezed her shoulder encouragingly as he passed. Lois tried to ignore the strange letdown feeling that settled into the pit of her stomach. _That_ her father noticed.

Perry rushed Clark into his car with a hurried goodbye to the Lanes. Clark had the impression that if Perry were any younger he would've peeled out of the driveway.

"Alice must make a good mystery pasta dish."

"I don't know what the hell she puts in it, but it sure tastes good," Perry chuckled.

_Thirty years and she _still_ has him wrapped around her little finger_, Clark smirked to himself, looking out the window at the remains of the beautiful sunset.

They rode in silence for awhile, Perry driving in the direction of the downtown area where the majority of single professionals lived. As they were passing the _Daily Planet_ building, Clark shifted awkwardly—Perry had had to resist a good laugh as he'd watched the man fold himself into the seat—and cleared his throat.

"Take a left here," Clark instructed. Perry raised an eyebrow; he was being directed to the nicer area of the overall downtown. The area was full of wealthy retired city slickers, the children of the wealthy from the suburbs, the upper end young business types—the entrepreneurs that made it, the hotshot up-and-comings in any field, etc.—and those nearing middle age who had been too career driven in earlier years to settle down in the suburbs and start a family. Perry would never had pictured one of his reporters, even one of his top reporters, and especially not after a five year break from the world, living in the area. "It's a right—here, then there's parking on the right."

Perry pulled into the underground parking garage and pulled into one of the guest spots. Clark unfolded from the passenger seat and led the way to the entrance to the building. It was quiet, most of the tenants either eating their TV dinners and watching the news, or out with friends. The elevator ride up to the top floor was awkward, and the elevator smelled like disgustingly expensive cheese. Clark couldn't figure it out, but he didn't think Perry could smell it—just another thing to be thankful for concerning his heightened Kryptonian senses.

"How the hell do you have an apartment on the top floor at a place like this, Kent?" Perry finally asked. Clark had to turn away to hide his smirk again; he'd practically been able to count the seconds from the time they'd pulled into the parking spot to the time he'd broken down and asked.

"Smart savings," Clark quipped back with an overlarge smile. Perry raised an eyebrow. "When I went on my trip I put half my money into a high interest savings account, and bought stock with the rest of it—I have a very g-good financial advisor, two, actually. I only spent the cash I had on my trip and I had a decent amount in the bank when I came back."

"Who're your financial advisors… I could use them for retirement planning," Perry chuckled. Clark laughed aloud.

"We b-both know you won't retire 'til you're dead."

"Probably true, but it'll placate Alice if she sees retirement planning," Perry shrugged. The elevator dinged and they got out. There were two apartments on his, the tenth, floor. His, on the left, eastern facing side of the building, and Mrs. McMillan's on the western side.

Mrs. McMillan had half a dozen cats, all of which seemed to know he was from a different planet and hate him for it. The lofty ceilings of the widow's apartment were filled with what she called 'cat-ways,' little walkways up in the rafters for the cats to walk around on as they saw fit. She also had chronically bad plumbing in her kitchen and always brought the problem to Clark instead of the superintendent.

Clark glanced through the door to his apartment while he fumbled to get his keys out of his pocket, checking for Superman suits lying about and whatnot. While there were no 'incriminating' pieces of evidence lying about, there was a masked man standing to one side of the doorway inside the apartment. The man's heart was racing, and his heart rate only increased when Clark put his key in the lock. He looked up at Perry as though there were something wrong with the doorknob to alert him to the presence of an intruder. Perry raised an eyebrow.

Clark threw the door open, letting it bang against the wall, not quite hard enough to damage the sheet rock of the wall, but hard enough to startle the masked man.

"Kent!" Perry bellowed, surprised, stepping away from the loud noise; the reflex relieved Clark. If there was one thing Clark liked about being Kryptonian, it was being able to observe human reflexes and use them to his advantage without having to overcome them himself. There was no fight-or-flight response hardwired into him, just analysis of the situation and following through. There was no automatic jerk away when something seemed threatening—he'd never learned to jerk his hand away from the hot oven because it didn't hurt, and, in his experience, a loud noise had never hurt anyone, it was what usually came after it that caused problems.

"Gah!" The man waiting inside the apartment said, twitching away from the door. The gun went off, setting the cats mewing next door, though Clark was the only one who could hear them as their mistress was out, probably at her evening bridge game with Mrs. Brozik downstairs. The bullet imbedded itself in Clark's door just above the handle.

Clark moved while the other two were still wondering what had happened. He stepped into the apartment, dropping his briefcase and grabbing the gun in the same motion.

In the hall, Perry blinked at the now vacant doorway.

"Fuck!" The man said, finding himself without a gun with his face planted against the wall, two very strong hands holding both of his arms folded against his back.

Perry entered the apartment and blinked a few times before turning the lights on, then he blinked some more.

It was a large room, the ceiling lofty, arching away from the wall the door to the outside hall was on and toward the far wall that seemed to be made out of tall, floor to ceiling length, windows. The lights the switch controlled were bright rope lights hidden in the beams overhead and the window frames, lighting the room without any visible light source. There was an arch leading into a kitchen and dining area, the ceiling just as lofty in there but with a dark chandelier to provide light. A closed door on the left of the arch to the kitchen led to what Perry assumed to be the bedroom. A hall led away from the living area to the rest of the apartment. Perry took a moment to take in the room, gaping slightly. The room was creamy white with subtle yellow and orange accents and the overall affect of the inside of a cloud at sunrise. The swirls were lighter at the gothic-style pinnacles of the arches, the cream and orange a little more common and pronounced at the base of the wall. One panel of glass leading out to the balcony was broken, but it hardly detracted from the view; the sun was setting over the Metropolis skyline, a view Perry had always treasured. There wasn't a great deal of furniture in the room, an ugly old couch sitting to one side of the room. It sat on an area rug; the symmetry of the room suggested that the couch should point at the TV against the wall, but it had been shifted around without any attention to the overall room to face the bay of windows and the view. Perry didn't blame him for moving it. The walls were lined in book shelves filled to bursting with books of all sizes and colors. Between and above the bookcases were old war signs, foreign film posters, plaques with witty quotes engraved on them, things that weren't Clark at all, but entirely Clark. The coffee table was as worn as the couch, but beautifully made, simple in it's design, but perfect; it was coated in newspapers from all over the world, clippings from the _Daily Planet_, notes for the stories Clark was working on, and pictures Jimmy had sent home with him to make up for the last five years. There was a stack of cardboard photo folders from the one hour photo at the grocery store in one corner of the coffee table—it was Perry's guess that Jimmy didn't know about those pictures, for he would be appalled at the use of a one hour photo over his traditional and much loved dark room.

"Uh, Chief?" Clark said, drawing Perry back into the moment, no matter how surreal it was. "Could you call 911? The phone's in the kitchen…"

Perry grunted at the absurdity of going to the kitchen for the phone when he had his cell in his pocket and pulled aforementioned cell out of his pocket. Clark nodded, glancing at his captive and loosening his grip a bit.

Shaking his head, Perry moved further into the apartment, taking everything while making the call.

The police arrived in record time so far as Perry was concerned, and in bigger force than he would've expected. Four pairs of officers made it upstairs a few minutes after the sirens arrived outside the building; Perry recognized three of them from the night he'd forced his way into Tracy's with Clark. Clark knew every single one of them by name, joking about being on the other end of the interview for once as they took his statement. For the first time, Perry noticed how Clark's stutter and klutzy habits were beneficial to those around him. As long as Clark was still dropping things and tumbling over his words, the world was okay, despite the fact that there was a hit out on him and he didn't seem very worried at all.

Clark bumbled through his official statement, putting the officer taking it at ease from the sheer normality of it.

- - -

It took several hours, but Clark's apartment was eventually clear of cops and potential murderers. The bullet had been collected, photos had been taken, and that was that. The building super, a nervous guy who kept a closet full of light bulbs and meticulously used spreadsheet on everything that happened in the building, hovered around in the doorway, trying to make sure Clark knew it hadn't been anybody's fault.

"The locks were new—I had them changed after the New Krypton Fiasco. All the locks in the building were changed. We had to get all new keys," The man, Allan Kramer, said, hands dragging through his sandy blond hair, making it stand out at odd, somewhat curly, angles.

"I know Mr. Kramer," Clark shrugged. "It looks like he came in off the balcony, anyway."

"So it does," Kramer said, nodding at the broken glass. "I should go make some calls—we'll have that repaired by the end of the week."

"Thanks, Mr. Kramer, I'll be staying with the Whites, but you'll still be able to reach me at my work number," Clark smiled his goofy, too-many-teeth smile. The smile relaxed Kramer somehow and he walked off in the general direction of the stairs, muttering numbers to himself as he tried to recall the phone number of his uncle's specialized glass warehouse.

"Here," Mrs. McMillan said, holding out a very fat calico cat. Clark was surprised she didn't tip over; she'd gotten back from her bridge game in the middle of the excitement, insisting on standing with Clark for moral support, clutching Tums, the cat, as her own anchor. "You shouldn't be alone after an experience like that. Tums will keep you company while I make you a batch of my famous brownies!"

"Um," Clark said, taking the cat, from her when she really did start tipping towards him, falling over from the odd balance. "Mrs. McMillan, I really don't need…"

"Shush, darling, I won't be a second!"

The cat was glaring at him, seemed to be on the brink of spazzing out; Mrs. McMillan's cats hardly tolerated his presence let alone being handled by him.

"There's glass all over the place, Mrs. McMillan. I wouldn't want… Tums, here, to, uh, step in it. And anyway, I won't be staying here—I'm just here to get a duffel…"

"I suppose you're right," she said, frowning and hurriedly taking the cat back. Clark willingly handed the animal back, forcing himself not to roll his eyes when he realized he was covered in brown, black, and white cat hairs—no matter where they were, one of the colors of the hairs showed up against the fabric of his suit. "I'll still bake you those brownies, though… I won't be an hour… Just take your time packing…" She shuffled back into her apartment, latching the door closed behind her and putzing in the general direction of the kitchen. On her way, she was distracted by Tums in her arms, setting him down near the food dishes and finding them nearly empty; she went to her closet and pulled out a humongous bag of cat food—Clark doubted she'd be stopping by with brownies anytime soon.

"Er, you alright, Chief?" Clark asked when his apartment door was closed, leaving the pair of them alone in the spacious room. Perry was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the rising moon and the city bathed in purple night. The street lamps were an afterthought at their height, adding shadow to the nearby buildings and nothing more.

"You have a great view," Perry observed, his voice much less gruff than Clark was used to hearing.

"Yeah, it's half the reason I chose this place," he shrugged.

"Only half?"

"The other half was the ceiling," Clark looked up at his ceiling, the hidden rope lights illuminating the entire room without being too bright, the height of it unusual in a normal apartment yet so essential to his comfort. "I can stretch without bending at the elbows," Clark explained, stretching a little. He was standing close enough to the door for Perry to see how a normal-height ceiling could be frustrating.

"Everybody across the way can see in, though," Perry observed after turning back to the window and watching the guy across the street and several floors down pull the blinds.

"Actually, the glass is all one w-way," Clark said, coming across the room with a broom to clean up the leftovers of the door to his balcony.

"Hm."

Alice was not happy when they finally arrived. It was almost midnight. She was a little more understanding when they explained about the murder attempt, but also nervous.

"Are you sure we want him staying with us?" She asked her husband while Clark was setting his things up in the guest bedroom. He couldn't help but overhear as he was listening around the city for cries for help, having had to block them out for the past few hours.

"Of course; you think I'd let him stay in that apartment alone? Especially after that attack?" Perry shook his head defensively. "No. Alice, I was the one who assigned the pair of them on this story. This is the least I can do."

"I'm just saying that your name was on that poster for a potential hostage. It's _possible_ somebody could come looking for him here, or to kidnap you or something."

"Honey, we'll be fine. At least for tonight—they already tried once, they won't do it again until they've had time to regroup."

Alice sighed and conceded, knowing when not to argue with her husband.

- - -

Lois lay awake in her childhood home, in the twin bed she'd slept on from the time she was nine to eighteen. Her bedroom hadn't changed much—the old posters and swim team trophies were gone, packed away to a storage locker with Lucy's old memorabilia, the couch that used to sit in the den, and any other odds and ends her parents didn't have the heart to throw away but didn't want to look at anymore. Jason was sleeping down the hall in Lucy's old room. He'd given her a 'but-there's-so-much-_pink_' look mixed with 'please-don't-make-me-sleep-in-there!!' but there hadn't been any other options short of the couch, which had a plastic slip-cover of sorts. Not the ideal sleeping arrangement, but manageable.

_So, what to do with my brain while I'm not sleeping…_ Lois thought, sighing aloud. _Hm. How long ago was it that Clark started telling Jason stories about his trip? _I've_ never heard about his trip—we've spent so much time together lately and we haven't' even talked about it. Figures. It's probably my fault, keeping it business, pushing him away. I don't know how Richard put up with that. Oh yeah, I was on the rebound and practically yanked into bed with me to prove… whatever… to myself. _She sighed again, examining the boring, spackled ceiling. There had been clouds on it once; the whole bedroom painted blue and sponged with white. She and her mother had spent an entire day perfecting the puffy clouds. Her father had spent maybe two hours painting it all over beige the day she moved out. At least he'd waited that long.

_So when did all this happen with Clark?_ The little voice in the back of her head asked, the one that she was usually really, really good at ignoring—it was Clark's voice.

_Nothing has actually HAPPENED with Clark,_ Lois informed the voice. Her head was filled with Clark's gentle chuckle. Her heart beat a little bit faster. _Damn._

- - -

Clark paced the guest bedroom he'd been assigned to during his stay with the Whites. It was a very nice room; Alice had obviously put a lot of thought into the decorations. There was a queen-sized bed, which was just long enough for him to lie down on and be entirely too long for the bed, with a blue, white, and darker blue plaid comforter. The curtains matched the comforter. Everything else matched—shades of blue to match the comforter and curtains, square-ish patterns. Alice had probably thought the room would feel like home, and he thanked her for that, but…

His thoughts dwelled on everything that was happening in the outside world while he was trapped in the White residence, Perry and Alice standing just the short hallway away discussing whether it was a smart idea to invite him to stay or not.

The police were canvassing the area Juliana had appeared in, though they'd already been over it once before, less thoroughly, when Leslie's body had been found. They were doing all that was humanly possible, but they'd been calling Clark's 'Superman' cell phone all evening. His presence made everything move faster, and he'd be able to tell them if there was a lead bunker, or lead-line storage unit in a neighboring warehouse they wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

On another tangent, he had given the poster from Gotham to Henderson—there was a total of three in Metropolis, the original at the police department, and the two copies in the _Planet_ bullpen. Henderson's men were at work, even at the late hour, analyzing the poster from all angles. The ink, the paper, the way the poster had been printed. He'd promised to ask Superman to bring another one to have more to analyze. They wanted a sample of the fake kryptonite, as well, though they didn't know how to ask him for it. There had been calls made to Gotham PD, though they doubted they would get anything worth the cost of shipping—despite Batman's efforts Gotham's police force was still heavily corrupted, but the streets were slowly cleaning up as one crime lord after another fell at the hand of the Dark Knight.

Sighing, Clark looked around the room again. He really didn't have that much stuff to spread out around the room in the process of 'settling in.' He'd taken off the Suit so he could look more casual in front of the Whites as needed, stashing it in the hidden pocket in his duffel his mother had sewn for him. The boots were harder to hide, but he managed—now he just had to deal with shoes that were two sizes to big.

"There you are, Kent. What'd you do, get lost in there?" Perry asked.

"Sorry, chief," Clark said good naturedly, getting a scowl from his boss. Perry let it go on account of the man had a hit out on him.

"Alice went to bed, but we're allowed to reheat those pasta thingies as long as we keep the noise down."

The quiet was awkward as they reheated the stuffed pasta shells in the oven. It was all Clark could do to keep himself from getting up and pacing. That or blasting the oven with a discreet ray of heat vision to get things heated up faster so he could make polite comments on the delicious pasta dish and rush to bed. The door locked, so he would be able to pretend he was sleeping while he went out to take care of what needed to be done.

He hadn't been on a proper patrol in almost two days.

"Oh, Clark," Alice said, appearing at the entrance to the hallway that led to the bedrooms. "Just so you know, we take breakfast in our pajamas," she said, smiling brightly, a bit tired, before waving goodnight again.

Clark nodded and smiled, glancing at the scowling Perry. The kitchen fell into another awkward silence, the pair of them staring at the oven.

Finally, the oven dinged and Perry stood to get the tray out of the oven. He propped the door open and took a moment to search for the hot pads—at first, Clark hadn't been able to figure out what the man was looking for.

- - -

The stuffed pasta shells had been very good, and Clark had been sure to compliment Perry more than strictly necessary. After they'd finished, Perry put the plates and tray into the sink to soak and wished Clark a good night. Clark hadn't expected to get off so easily.

Locking the door securely behind him, Clark pulled the Suit out of its hidden pocket and spun into it before easing the window open. The curtains fluttered in the midsummer breeze, the only real movement on the block so far as he could tell.

He shot into the air as soon as he was free of the curtains, quickly flying once around the world to stretch out properly. A quick scan of Metropolis expanded to a quick scan of the rest of the world. Mostly, everything was alright. He hadn't missed any natural disasters or major fires or plane crashes or anything so dire. Changing his trajectory as he came over California again, he headed to Gotham to find Bruce.

The Dark Knight was standing in his kitchen holding a bowl of pasta, his butler doing similarly on the other side of the center island. They were discussing the best spices to add to a marinara sauce and arguing about the most appetizing types of noodles. Clark laughed aloud for a brief moment before dropping to ground level and knocking on the kitchen door. Inside, both men froze. Then Bruce did his looking-like-he-could-see-through-the-door-even-though-he-can't-but-he-does-it-to-piss-Superman-off thing and Clark chuckled again.

"Master Kent," Alfred said amiably, opening the door. "A pleasure to see you again."

"Hi, Alfred," Clark smiled, stepping over the threshold into the kitchen upon invitation.

"I wondered if you'd make it tonight," Bruce said casually. Clark smiled. Wayne Manor was one of two places in the world where he could be himself, totally and completely, and not worry about a thing.

"Perry decided I should stay with him and his wife on the off chance that somebody tries to kill me again."

"I heard about that guy that was in your apartment."

"How? That was only a few hours ago."

"It was," he checked his watch, "Eight hours ago, and word travels fast—especially between corrupt cops."

"I thought your main contact was with the 'one trustworthy cop in Gotham,'"

"Gordon is Batman's only contact. Bruce Wayne, though, has dinner with a number of quite corrupt officials every couple of evenings."

"Which explains why you're eating spaghetti right now," Clark deadpanned.

"Have you ever _been_ to a fancy dinner, Clark?" Bruce asked, sounding almost frustrated. "We either have twelve courses, or these tiny, fancy-looking, pieces-of-art dishes… tonight we ate art."

"And you probably paid a fortune for it."

"I try not to think about it," Alfred put in, smirking slightly as he filled his mouth with pasta. Bruce scowled good-naturedly for a moment before turning serious and facing his friend again.

"So, you snuck out of your boss's house to come to Gotham. What do you need?"

"I need as many posters as I can get, for analysis, and a sample of the kryptonite from the street."

"One step ahead of you," Bruce said, grabbing his dish and gesturing for Clark to follow.

"I'll just clear this up here, Master Bruce," Alfred said, turning to the task before Bruce could respond.

Bruce showed Clark into the cavernous hide-out dubbed the Bat Cave—a joke from Alfred that had stuck once Rachel had gotten ahold of it, finding the pinched look at the corners of Bruce's eyes whenever it was mentioned entertaining. It had changed greatly since the last time Clark had visited; of course, that had been five, almost six, years previously. The waterfall still roared against the back wall, concealing the wide passage Bruce had had carved to be able to get in and out in the Tumbler; the walls were still dark and wet, giving the space a slightly creepy atmosphere; the crevices in the ceiling were still filled with bats, chirping constantly at a pitch only they and Superman could hear. The computers and lighting had been updated. The area around the elevator shaft was the driest and almost looked as though Alfred had recently swept it. Bruce's Suit and the spares were stashed to one side next to a refrigerated cupboard full of ice packs of various sizes; the master computer and huge monitor were on a lower dais with a plush office chair along with three flat screen televisions, all displaying different news stations on mute. The Tumbler was on-level with the exit on the other side of the waterfall, the finest tools of an auto shop pushed against the wall nearest it and farthest from the falls. There were three rows of filing cabinets, all black and covered in black plastic, full of file after file on the people Batman was interested in, be they criminals, corrupt cops, honest cops, drug dealers, journalists, fellow philanthropists, anybody Bruce thought was worth keeping an eye on for whatever reason. Beyond the files was a workbench with odds and ends, including a small lead chest and a stack of posters. Bruce made his way to the workbench.

"I collected about a dozen posters," he said, gesturing to the posters, "and a good deal of kryptonite. I haven't had any of it checked, though—it would take days to authenticate in Metropolis, _weeks_ here in Gotham."

"It only takes a couple of seconds, open the chest," Clark suggested, walking over to stand next to the workbench as well.

"You sure?"

Clark just nodded, gripping the edge of the table in anticipation. With a final glance at him, Bruce opened the lid to reveal six smallish hunks of vivid green rock. Clark flinched, the radiation seeping into his bones immediately. The scar from Luthor's shiv throbbed horribly; if he'd looked at it he would've seen it take on an unhealthy yellow-green color, the veins around it tinged green. A slow ache rose to his temples, his joints stiffening uncomfortably. Bruce slammed the lid shut.

"They're definitely selling real stuff."

"You told me today that they were," Clark reminded him.

"Yeah, well, I was more hypothesizing than anything else… I used a couple of different people to get ahold of this stuff. The most dangerous of them and the ones who said they were from Metropolis got samples that were a little more _neon_ than the rocks the small-time crooks from Gotham got."

"We should test to see which are fake and which aren't," Clark said, his face clearly saying that he didn't want to. Bruce nodded darkly.

Quickly, he opened the lid again and took out the rocks he thought were fake before snapping the lid shut. "Any of these real?" He asked, holding out four chunks of the green rock. Clark shook his head, able to stand up straight without his knees and hips locking up. "This one?" Bruce asked, whipping out one of the two rocks left in the box, closing the lid for a brief second.

"Yep," Clark said, gritting his teeth.

"This?"

"Yes."

"Right, so…" Bruce looked over the four rocks he'd pulled out the first time and the closed lead box containing the two pieces of real kryptonite. "Two to six. I don't like those odds."

"Me neither."

Clark left five minutes later, reluctantly packing the kryptonite and posters into a messenger-type bag of all black with bats subtly worked into the design.

- - -

Everyone he encountered as he made his way through the police station to Henderson's office stared. It was one thing for Superman to walk into the building—that caused a stir in itself. It was another thing entirely for Superman to walk through the building carrying a medium sized black bag as though he would rather it were on the other side of the planet instead of on his shoulder.

He knocked lightly on Henderson's door, not making eye contact with anybody in the room while he waited for an answer.

"Jeff, I swear—my last was final! I don't care _how_ uncooperative Gotham PD is…!" Henderson called angrily before yanking his door open angrily. His jaw hung a bit slack when he saw Superman standing a bit awkwardly on the other side of the door.

"Gotham PD is notorious for it's… _unhelpfulness_," Clark agreed.

"Superman. Uh. Come on in. Sorry," Henderson said, stumbling over his words. Clark couldn't help but smile; the man practiced intimidation tactics on Lois Lane, mostly because they never worked and he wanted to see if he could crack her, and was one of Clark Kent's good friends, but Superman made him nearly as bad at putting sentences together as Clark's office persona was on a bad day.

"I apologize for just showing up like this," Superman said, deeply, formally, once the door was closed behind them, Henderson standing next to his chair and staring a bit dumbly at his counterpart.

"No, it's no problem, thank you for coming… I had a few things I'd like to ask you…"

"Yes, I got your messages," Clark said quickly, smiling lightly and pulling the tiny cell phone from its unnoticeable place on his belt. "I'm in contact with Batman," he indicated the bag and the bat clasp, "who is a little more reliable than Gotham PD, I'm sorry to say."

"Vigilante justice," Henderson mumbled disapprovingly under his breath. Clark caught the chief's eye, humor in his own; the chief was startled, not used to talking to somebody who could hear _everything_. "Sorry."

"Not at all. I can't say that I agree with his methods all the time, but things have been improving steadily since he made himself known… I trust him."

"You're friends?"

"You could say that," Clark smirked; Henderson wasn't able to read him, not knowing to look for the same tells as he did on his reporter friend. Clark became more serious, opening the bag and emptying it on the chief's desk. The posters were in plastic sheaves—Bruce had been able to lift prints from a few of them, which he preserved in hopes that Metropolis PD would do more with the evidence than Gotham PD had pretended to search for with the posters they'd collected. He'd printed out his findings, some of it coming from his personal files, and stuck the printouts between plastic encased posters. "These are all from the Narrows. The telephone poles are coated in them. There are fingerprints and Batman attached the information he had," Clark hesitated a moment before pulling the false kryptonite out of the bag. "Then there is the kryptonite."

"Shouldn't that hurt you?" Henderson asked, panicking at the sight of Superman's pale hand around the rock. Clark had to conceal a smile.

"None of these rocks are kryptonite."

"Oh, uh, good."

"The real rocks are in here," he said, pulling the lead chest free of the black bag. He opened the lid for a brief second, just long enough for Henderson to get a glimpse of the menacing rocks. Clearing his throat, he handed the box over.

"Thank you, Superman," Henderson said earnestly. Clark nodded once.

"There is a note with the posters about the kryptonite; where and how it was acquired, who from, how much it cost."

"Thank you, this is more than helpful," Henderson said, his eyes sparkling similar to the way Lois's did when she knew she was onto something big. To himself, he muttered, "Hopefully we'll get more off the posters, especially with the fingerprints. And with these names we might be able to trace the kryptonite back to whoever put the hit on Lane and Kent…" He glanced up and flushed when he found Superman's unearthly gaze trained on him. "Sorry."

"Don't worry, Chief," Superman said lightly, "half the city talks to themselves almost all day long."

"Erm, right," Henderson said, clearing his throat.

"I—" Clark's head jerked to one side, hearing a call for help less than a mile away—a woman was about to be mugged, possibly raped. "I should go."

"Thank you, Superman—these are the best leads we have. Thank Batman for us the next time you see him?"

"I will. Good evening, Chief," he nodded once solemnly before opening the nearby window and shooting out of sight. Henderson sat down in his chair, looking over the files momentarily before staring out the window and shaking his head.

**See that, Wahoogal? Not even maimed ;)**


	11. Chapter 10

**My apologies for another inexcusably short chapter...**

Clark rolled out of bed with the sunrise as usual. It took a moment for him to remember where he was, the lack of sleep was finally, truly, catching up with him. He'd gotten, maybe, twenty minutes of sleep.

After rescuing the woman from definitely would've been a sexual assault, he'd gone to the warehouse district. Despite the late hour, Metropolis PD was searching the area. He was able to look through the walls and into the dirt beneath, again, in search of lead-blocked areas or other handy places for hiding children. Nothing had stood out. The officer in charge had assured him they would be questioning Juliana in greater detail, again, in the morning. Clark had gone on his rounds around the world, then; there were other things happening besides the kidnappings, though his mind never trailed far.

He'd gotten back to the White house just after four in the morning, and woken just before five. He lay back in bed, wondering if he had time to fly up above the clouds for a dose of sunshine before the Whites rose, but then he heard Perry rustling around, getting out of bed.

The editor-in-chief padded down the hall in bare feet, headed for the coffee pot. Clark chuckled; Perry looked exactly like Lois, at least so far as his morning expression went, before coffee, though much less endearing and much more alarming—what was left of his thick white hair stuck up at all angles, though the back was firmly matted from a full night's rest upon it.

Clark ran a hand through his hair, checking the mirror to make sure he looked like he'd been sleeping for longer than he had before unlocking the door and heading for the kitchen.

"Kent," Perry said blearily, looking for a moment as though he had forgotten Clark was staying in the guest bedroom. "You're up early."

"Raised on a farm," Clark replied, shrugging. Perry nodded once, accepting the sentence, and began looking for his coffee mug.

They sat in silence, Perry enjoying the caffeine entering his bloodstream, Clark imagining he did—placebo affect, if nothing else. The morning edition of the _Daily Planet_ arrived and they distracted themselves reading it, Perry starting in the sports section, to Clark's amusement. Clark started on the front page and worked his way backward. His and Lois's latest shared byline on the kidnappings was above the fold and accompanied by Juliana's mug shot. The way it was set up would sell papers—simply reading the headline and seeing the picture would suggest that the kidnapper had been caught.

"You read as fast as you type, Kent," Perry commented when Clark reached page three. Clark reddened immediately, he hadn't been thinking, his eyes traveling faster than normal human eyes should across the pages, but not _too_ fast he didn't think. He was used to getting through at least ten papers every morning after flying to a number of different continents to get them all. He simply shrugged in response to Perry's observation.

Fifteen minutes later, the silence of the house was interrupted by Clark's cell phone vibrating where he'd left it to charge on the kitchen counter the night before. He glared at it for a moment before getting up to answer it. It was Lois's number.

"Lois, it's not even five," Clark sighed by way of a greeting.

"Mommy's missing, Uncle Clark," Jason said on the other end, sounding tired and terrified.

"What?" Clark was wide awake, twenty minutes of sleep or not, standing up straight and hanging onto the little boy's words.

"There were men here, bad men; they came in through her bedroom window. They had those green rocks, kryptonite."

"You saw them?"

"Just a little bit. I woke up to… use the bathroom," Jason was shifting on his feet across town, holding the phone close and trying to speak so that his grandmother wouldn't hear. "And they were trying to get her out the window. She was all limp…"

"Don't worry Jason, we'll find her; I'll get there as soon as I can," Clark promised, clicking the phone shut and hurrying down the hall to the guest room. He grabbed the first clothes out of his duffel that would hide the Suit beneath—light jeans and a long sleeved navy t-shirt with a white undershirt. He was dressed in no time, hair still much messier than usual, sneakers from the farm going untied. Perry openly stared when Clark left the bedroom fully dressed with his computer bag over one shoulder after half a minute.

"What's going on?" Perry asked, getting up to follow Clark to the door; he'd never seen Kent move so fast, nor dressed so casually; he'd hardly seen him outside of work, though.

"That was Jason, Lois was kidnapped."

"Hold on, I'll drive you."

But Clark was already gone, the door shut firmly in the editor's face. When Perry opened the door, there was no sign of Clark.


	12. Chapters 11 & 12

**Just FYI, for the sake of this fic, Metropolis is a large island-city off of Long Beach, officially a part of New York, connected to the mainland by a dozen arcing bridges. Gotham is in New Jersey on the waterfront several miles south of the southernmost edge of Metropolis. I'm not sure if any of this will be relevant to this chapter, but it's just good to know.**

**I've never read the comic books (Batman or Superman) so if this is completely off, sorry. Now on with the fic—that last one was kind of a cliff hanger…**

Clark shot up into the sky just shy of breaking the sound barrier. When he was high in the atmosphere, he shot across the city, hardly a streak in the sky.

He was panicking. He couldn't hear Lois's heartbeat; wherever she was she was either dead or in a sound proofed, lead-lined... _something_.

There was no sign of her in her parents' neighborhood or the surrounding area. He followed the main roads leading out of the area and scanned the convenient highways. There wasn't even a suspicious-looking paneled van driving down the road.

Clark landed a few blocks from the Lane house, forcing himself to take a deep breath, and pause to tie his shoes this time. It was 5:30a, Lois hadn't been missing for an hour yet. Back before he had gone to Krypton, Lois getting kidnapped had been an almost weekly occurrence. Usually he had been taken with her, which had helped his stress levels, but there were plenty of times when he'd spent hours flying over the city in search of her or ended up sitting and waiting at the police station with Perry—they would never tell Lois's parents when she was missing as Ella tended to panic and the General tended to call in all units, and neither reaction helped the police do their jobs or Clark his.

Long strides brought him to the Lane house, where he stood for a second to observe. It was a pleasant sort of house, two stories, tan-ish siding, black shutters, plain black shingles. Most of the windows were open, the curtains ruffling in the cool morning breeze. The lights were on in the kitchen and living room; Clark could hear the Lanes' panicked voices from within. The General was pacing, the kitchen cordless pressed to his ear, on hold to call in a favor with an old comrade. Ella was nervously stirring oatmeal for Jason on the stovetop; Jason sat on a barstool biting his lip, like his mother did when she was truly nervous, and staring at the front door.

Clark walked up the front sidewalk, lined with Ella's carefully kept flower beds, and raised his hand to knock on the door. Before he could even make a sound, Jason heaved the door open; Clark sadly shook his head in response to the boy's unspoken question, and gathered his son into his arms. Jason hung on, eyes pinched tight to hold back tears.

"We'll find her, Jason," Clark assured him, walking into the house. Jason nodded wordlessly against his chest.

"Clark," Ella said, almost surprised, when Clark and Jason entered the kitchen. Her eyes were puffy and red from the crying she'd been doing since the occupants of the house had been awoken by a single scream from Lois, protesting shouts from Jason, and the labored grunts of men. Then silence before Jason had thrown their bedroom door open, terror in his eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Jason called me," Clark said, glancing at the boy he'd just set back on his barstool.

"He did?"

"I used Mommy's cell phone," Jason explained, his voice smaller than Clark could ever remember hearing it.

"What'd you go calling him for?" The General asked gruffly, still on hold and all the more annoyed.

"Uncle Clark always knows what to do," Jason observed quietly. Clark looked away; he'd been back for less than six months and Jason was already very loyal to him. He'd babysat for Lois when she and Richard wanted an evening alone to try and work out their ever growing list of issues, kept an eye on the boy in the bullpen—Jason gravitated to his desk no matter what time of day. Clark's eidetic memory was tested every time Jason visited the boy asking question after question about everything and anything. Some were deep philosophical questions that Clark had no idea how to answer but tried anyways, others were mindless trivia questions, which were more fun mostly because Clark knew a good deal about a lot of useless things and it entertained Jason to no end. Jason always seemed to be around when Lois and Clark were deciding their plan of attack for a new story. It was the one part of the process that Clark was able to outshine Lois in—she had the more current information, the majority of her contacts didn't presume her dead (though most of Clark's old 'friends' were checking in with him again), and she was the more forceful of their pair. Meanwhile, he had the mind for planning, able to map out a series of articles and guestimate the sort of information they'd need, whereas Lois, though she did just fine by herself, often rushed into her work and ended up playing catch-up moments before her deadlines.

"I doubt that," the General observed before resuming his pacing.

Clark ignored him, setting his messenger bag on the counter and putting his cell phone of top of it before looking up at Ella with a question, "Have you even called the police yet?"

"No—Sam has been trying to get a hold of—"

Clark shook his head, not letting her continue. He picked up his phone and dialed an old number, praying it went through.

"Lucy, I have to call Lucy," Ella said while Clark's phone rang. She dove for her cell phone in her purse.

"Tobias Krenske," the voice that answered was wearier than Clark remembered, but still TK's. Clark had always found him too serious, but very good at his job—a missing persons detective starting at about the same time Clark had started at the _Daily Planet_. They'd been neighbors for awhile before TK had married the girl upstairs and moved to suburbia to start a family. Clark had gone to the wedding and the wife's funeral just over a year later. TK had a daughter, eight years old now, by his late wife who Clark had babysat once upon a time, his only practice for Jason.

"TK," Clark greeted, "Clark Kent."

"Clark!" TK said, obviously surprised to hear from him. "It's been a long time. How was your trip?"

"It was good, the trip was good," Clark was nodding. The General gave him a look. "I've been back for almost six months now, got into town the same day Superman did, actually."

"Busiest news day in five years."

"You're telling me." They both chuckled for a brief moment.

"So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your conversation?"

"Are you still in missing persons?"

"I'm _in charge_ of missing persons."

"Just my luck," Clark chuckled. "Lois is missing."

"Again?"

"Just like old times."

"You know, she's been doing very well while you were gone. She cut it down to once every few months after her kid was born."

"Well, I'm here with her kid now," Clark said, adding an edge to his voice. "He's the only witness."

"How long?"

"An hour."

"Where?"

- - -

Krenske's detectives were at the house a half hour later, questioning the Lanes while Clark sat on a stool out of the way with his laptop. He could stare at the screen while listening to the detectives in the other room as they carefully questioned Jason again. Lucy arrived an hour after the detectives and joined Clark on a stool in the kitchen.

- - -

Lois's return to consciousness wasn't nearly as effortless as slipping into the darkness upon the prick of the needle had been.

Sensations came first. Her neck burned where she'd been stuck with the needle that had injected whatever it was that had knocked her out. She was laying on her side on a flat, hard, and oddly warm surface. Her back ached; she'd been in the same position for some time. Her knuckles on her right hand were itchy with scabs from the one good hit she'd gotten off before she'd hit the floor.

The floor was concrete, probably near a source of constant heat, and very rough. The room was _very_ warm, stifling, really. The air was thick, humid and smoky. Altogether quite uncomfortable. She could hear other people in the room. Kids, by the sound of it. They were whispering together a short distance away, their voices too muddled in the suffocating air for her to hear what they were saying.

She opened her eyes, closing them immediately. The air was indeed thick with smoke, burning her eyes. Slowly, she opened them again, blinking rapidly until she could hold her eyes open. It wasn't the smoke of a fire, but cigarette smoke billowing around the ceiling.

_There went my record_, Lois thought somewhere in the back of her mind. _Two whole months of resistance… Clark throwing my stash away, Superman never letting me light up._ The two of them peeved her to no end. Clark she could handle, but Superman… she forced the train of thought away and blinked her eyes open again.

She was facing a cement wall; it was rounded, sloping up towards the ceiling and out of view. The smoke was thicker higher up, whirling about as propelled by a wide-bladed ceiling fan with a light bulb shining through the cracked fixture.

Lois sat up fast to get it over with. The room went silent.

"Ugh," she couldn't help but wince, putting a hand to her head, then touching her neck where the needle had penetrated. It was swollen, hot—enflamed. Still burning.

"She's 'wake," one of the voices from behind her observed. Slowly, Lois shifted around, moving stiffly; she pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins and supporting her chin on her knees to try to stop the cylindrical room from spinning so much.

"Hi," a boy said. Not the same boy who had alerted the others to her consciousness, this one was older, older than all the kids in the room, she was sure.

"Hi," Lois replied, still blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear the smoke from her eyes.

"I'm Todd," the boy said. He was short, hardly taller than Jason, with the palest of blue eyes and sandy blond hair.

"Todd Evans?" Lois asked, recalling the name from Clark's exposition at the hospital after reading the police report on Juliana.

"Yeah," Todd said, perking up. "How'd you know?"

"I'm Lois Lane, I'm a reporter—there was a woman who told us about you…"

"Miss Juliana?" A little girl asked.

"Is Petey okay? Did they make it out?" Charlie Van Buren asked, eyes eager. Lois nodded, taking a moment to inspect the children in front of her. There were ten of them, three girls and seven boys, and none of them looked healthy. There were cuts and bruises on their faces, puffy eyes from crying and the smoke. None of them were standing up so Lois couldn't tell if any of them were injured more seriously. Charlie was holding his right arm close to his body; not a good sign.

"Last I heard he was back at home with your parents and sisters," she said. Her voice was scratchy, not coming out as loud as she planned for it to. She cleared her throat and repeated herself.

"Good," Charlie said, coughing for a moment before looking at the floor.

"You're the one that talks to Superman, right?" Todd asked. The rest of the kids were just sitting there, listening. Lois got the impression they were afraid she would hurt them despite the fact that she was still groggy from the drug, aching all over.

"Yes," Lois said, trying not to give away anything about her current standings with the superhero in the answer.

"So that means he'll be coming for us, right?" The smallest of the boys asked.

"He's been looking for you for almost a month," Lois said sadly. The older kids frowned, the younger kids looked concerned because the older ones did.

"Well, he'll be looking harder because _you're_ here now, right?"

"Hey—" Lois started, but raised voices from the other side of what Lois had assumed was a wall but she now saw to be a very solid door.

"_I told you to grab the BOY!" _A man bellowed.

"That's Bill," Todd whispered to Lois.

"_But there's that hit out on the reporter. Why not collect the money and use it to get more kids?_" A second man replied, sounding almost, but not quite, repentant.

"_Yeah, you said we couldn't start with the experiment 'til we got a few more kids._" A third man, sounding much younger than the other two, said.

"_No_," Bill said forcefully. "_The Boss wanted the reporter's kid specifically. We couldn't start 'til we got him, you idiot! The _Boss_ put the hit out on Lane and Kent to get them out of the way to make our job easier. And YOU went and COMPLICATED IT!"_

"_Well, but…" _The first man started to protest but was interrupted mid-sentence by what sounded like a fist to the face. All the kids in the bunker around Lois flinched.

"_Bill_," the younger man said in an almost calming tone.

"_Aw, God, I think you broke my jaw_," the first man whined.

"_If I'd broken your jaw you wouldn't be able to talk_," Bill growled.

"_Oh_."

"_Pack everything up_," Bill instructed. "_We're moving to the new bunker early_," Lois could practically feel him glaring at the other men. Their voices were quieter now, harder to make out. "_I want everything in the trucks by two. Knock the kids out good and toss 'em in the lead-lined U-Haul_."

"_What about the reporter?_"

"_Give her a double dose and leave her where she is_," Bill said. "_Then torch the place. One less threat to worry about; the Boss'll be happy about that. Leave no evidence_."

- - -

The detectives left to do their work leaving crime scene investigators to go over Lois's room and any other areas of the house and yard that could possibly yield anything helpful.

Perry arrived just after noon, furious that Clark hadn't called with an update. Clark, though, had been on the phone since the detectives had gone, setting himself up at the kitchen counter on a stool with a map of the city. He had more than a few contacts in the less pleasant areas of the city and not so noble professions. It was handy, as a journalist, and meant he could keep an eye on Metropolis' underworld, as Superman.

Clark hung up with a sigh, crossing off another few sections on his map and sitting back to study it.

"Eat something," Lucy insisted for the hundredth time. Clark, grudgingly, took the salami and mustard sandwich she'd been trying to feed him and had a big bite, giving Lois's sister a big grin before turning back to his map.

"What've you been working on?" Lucy asked, sitting down on the stool next to him. Jason looked up to listen from his place down the counter with his coloring book. Perry and Ella, who had been talking in the doorway, paused to listen as well.

"Well," Clark said, clearing his throat, "I've been getting in contact with the right people, c-calling in a few favors," he rolled up his sleeves and began explaining his map. He'd sectioned Metropolis off according to the gangs that ran the street corners, dealer territories, and other such segmentations, overlaying that with marks for specific places the big names and mob bosses called the office, and where people were most often stashed or dumped.

"Bit morbid, isn't it?" Lucy asked, looking shaken. Clark couldn't help but think of how much she looked like her sister when she was worried. Not many people would make that connection, of course, because Lois hardly let anybody in far enough to see her worry. The sisters had the same dark hazel eyes, their father's, and their mother's classical face shape and jaw line. Lucy's hair was darker than Lois's and straight, pulled back into a practical ponytail; she was a mother of three, after all. When they worried, their eyes went a little wider than normal, their body language closing off to protect themselves.

"It's practical," Clark said, sounding more like Lois than himself. "I've called all my useful contacts. No known gang took her. None of the drug dealers I know or the ones _they _know heard anything. Everybody knows ab-bout the hit, none of them admit to considering trying for it," a small smirk touched his lips briefly. He knew at least two of the gangs he'd talked to had come into the ownership of a very small amount of kryptonite.

"What's with all the red marks?" Perry asked, coming to look over Clark's shoulder.

"That's where she's not."

There were a lot of red marks.

"What does all that mean, then?" Ella asked, coming to stand just behind his other shoulder to examine the map herself. Clark sighed.

"Well… Mostly that nobody knows who took her and didn't take her themselves," he frowned at the map. He didn't believe any of them were lying. He'd met them in person before, able to monitor their heartbeats and other tells when they tried to lie. They'd learned not to lie to him. "There isn't much we can do with that," he set the red pen down after marking the last territory off with disappointed finality.

- - - **Chapter 12**

A raging fire in a warehouse only three units down from the yard he'd encountered Juliana in caught Clark's attention as he flew over the city. He had been both trying to clear his head and looking for anybody in need of his assistance and found himself back at the warehouse faced with a plume of black smoke.

The fire had most certainly been lit on purpose. He could practically smell the accelerant from a hundred feet up.

It had taken him less than a minute to put out the fire in the above-ground warehouse. It was mostly empty, a dozen wooden crates stacked against one wall, a few metal storage pods he normally wouldn't give a second glance. But one of the storage pods was at the center of the fire, the hottest part by far. It was only when he lifted the pod out of the warehouse, tossing it into the harbor, when he realized that the pod itself wasn't the source of the fire, as he'd suspected, but from beneath it. There was a twisting wood and metal staircase leading deep below the ground level, smoke billowing up in hot curls. The wood of the staircase had burned away, the metal much too hot for a human touch.

He'd dropped down the shaft, the hot metal supports clanging in protest as they broke against his boots. He could hear the echo of a familiar heartbeat coming from the bunker below.

The bunker was split into two rooms by a heavy metal door. The fire had originated in the main room closest to the staircase. The room was practically dripping in fire, gasoline staining the walls, lighter fluid the meager furniture. It seemed as though whoever had lit the fire had made sure it would burn hot and long, the room was littered with books and kindling, _actual kindling_, the type bought at a campground for roasting marshmallows in a fire pit. The facility was made of lead and lined with sound-proofing materials, making the interior almost a foot smaller than the outer wall would suggest.

Clark exhaled into the room, putting out the fire and coating what was left of the furniture and what wasn't left, namely the ash, in ice crystals. The smoke rushed out the stairwell area with his breath. The hinges of the cumbersome door squealed in protest when he pulled it out, thick black smoke swirling out at him. He slowly inhaled, taking most of the smoke in without creating a vacuum, then blew it out the stairwell. Above, he heard firefighters cry out in surprise when a rush of smoke and cold air hit them, but nobody was hurt.

Labored breathing from inside the bunker brought Clark's attention back to the lead shielded room he'd just opened up. The room hadn't been coated with gasoline and the floor wasn't littered with kindling, but the walls were stained black from the smoke. A ceiling fan continued to spin lazily, the smoky air that had rushed in to fill the room after Clark had removed the smoke billowing about lazily. There was no light in the back room of the bunker, the light bulb in the ceiling fan missing, the light coming in from above not making it past a hazy pool on the floor.

Lois was curled in a ball on the floor, her heartbeat thready, her breaths wheezing but strong. _She's always had strong lungs_, Clark couldn't help but think, desperately. He x-rayed her, relieved to see that nothing was broken. There was smoke in her lungs, her bronchial tubes constricted. Blood was rushing to her right cheek and a welt-looking thing on her neck.

He scooped her up into his arms and lifted off, hovering his way out to the ruined staircase and gently adjusting her to fit closer to his body so that she wouldn't hit the sides or the remaining metal staircase frame on the way up.

The firemen on ground level had the fire put out; the pods coated in crusty blackness, most of the contents of the pods closest to the underground bunker were filled with ash. The firemen were gathered near the hole leading deep down, peering into it. They jumped back when Superman floated out of the darkness, smoke wafting up with him, making the darkness seem to be moving.

Clark's face was guardedly neutral, keeping Lois tight to him as he flew out of the bunker and then the warehouse. He kept her head tilted back, keeping her airway as clear as possible.

"God, Lois, don't leave me now," he whispered, soaring toward the hospital.


	13. Chapter 13

**I apologize for my exposition-laden dialogue.**

Lois woke in a hospital bed, wearing a hospital gown, an IV in her arm, and a mask over her mouth and nose. Clark was slouched, asleep, in one of the uncomfortable guest chairs next to the bed, Jason lying across his wide chest. She couldn't help but smile. The two of them looked so natural together like that, and she'd been seeing it more and more lately.

She was hit by a massive wave of guilt when she remembered who else was in the hospital.

Clark stirred, blinking at her blearily from the other side of his thick lenses before smiling, his face written with obvious relief. "G'morning," he whispered, shifting so that he could slide Jason off of him without waking the boy, and coming to sit on the bedside at her hip. "How are you feeling?"

"Crappy," she responded honestly, taking the mask away from her face to speak, her voice coming out scratchy, her throat burning when she talked.

"You're very lucky to be alive," Clark said. His voice was deeper than she was used to hearing, his eyes darker, hardly existent lines around his eyes and mouth seeming more shadowed. She'd been kidnapped plenty of times before and never seen him so grave.

"So the world is finally returning to normal: hell is warming up, pigs are coming in for a final landing?" She joked. Clark's face didn't lighten.

"It was complete chance that he found you, Lois. There was a pillar of smoke and he followed the natural course from there. I know you're mad as hell at him, but if it weren't for him you'd be dead—there's no way the firemen would've made it down there in time themselves," he said, taking her tiny hand in his large one and rubbing her fingers. Her skin was dry from the heat of the flames after the humidity in the air of the bunker.

"Bill's men took me," she said, clearing her throat uncomfortably and only making it worse. The conversation paused while Clark got up and filled a plastic cup with water and located a straw, handing it to her and helping her sit up to drink.

"I thought so," Clark admitted.Lois cocked an eyebrow, asking for more information. "It was like you were kidnapped by ghosts. They aren't associated with any known organizations of any kind. No gangs, not even dealers. It's like Luthor's old gang when he was in his prime."

"Do you think Luthor's behind all this?" Lois asked, talking much easier after the water, though less painful when she whispered, so whisper she did.

"I hope not," Clark said, lowering his voice as well. He was holding her hand again, hip touching hers through the sheet. Her thumb was moving over his ever-soft skin, tracing a circle.

"It's his style. The roundabout attack from no traceable source with random appearances that can't be linked to anything. It wasn't seven years ago when he had a few men in every gang, in every chain of dealers, informants on every street corner, in half the businesses in Metropolis… he was as bad as Carmine Falcone was in Gotham at the time, only worse because he kept going after Superman," she sighed and took a drink.

"There was never corruption in the police force here. He tried for it, though; the Henderson murders. He messed up back then," Clark reminded her. "He connected himself to the murders. He's arrogant enough to mess up again, if it's him."

"Whoever this 'Boss' guy is is smart."

"Lex is smart, but he's human."

"So are we," Lois reminded him and he couldn't help but feel a flash of guilt. He had the feeling everything was going to come crashing down around his ears and soon. Lois was Clark Kent's best friend, Lois was Superman's former lover—she was _furious_ with Superman even after six months of apologies and attempted explanations, while she kept letting Clark deeper past her defensive walls. When he finally told her, removing the block he'd discovered he'd put in place when he'd messed with her memory five years ago, stopping her from being curious about his identity again or paying attention to the details that would entice her to look beyond, he predicted any number of negative reactions. He was Pompeii and she was Vesuvius. And she worked for an internationally renowned newspaper. "We can miss things."

"Constant vigilance," Clark quipped, a smile touching his lips for the first time since she'd woken. Just seeing him smile lifted Lois's heart a little. "What happened, Lois?"

"Well," she cleared her throat, taking a moment to breath from the mask before continuing. "I was sleeping; I heard my window click in a certain way. I know that click because it's done that ever since I was fifteen and I 'fixed' my window so that I could open it from the outside without much effort."

"You delinquent, you."

"And now it came back and bit me in the ass," she replied, taking another sip of water to sooth her throat. "There were at least three of them, they drugged me," her hand went to her neck where a gauze pad was taped. It felt _much_ better than it had the last time she had been conscious. "I saw Jason run into the room and then everything went dark. I woke up in a cylindrical bunker with all these kids, the missing kids. I recognized the ones we've been investigating and the two Juliana identified, but there were so many more. Bill wasn't happy with the guys that kidnapped me. The 'Boss' wanted Jason, not me. They talked about an experiment…" she trailed off and gulped down some water, her thumb stilling on Clark's hand, Clark's hand tightening around hers. "I don't know, they only mentioned it once. I was supposed to die in the bunker; they want both of us out of the way so they only have to deal with Superman when they try for Jason again. They had kryptonite. They were moving to a new bunker, it sounded like it was out of town. Somewhere where they wouldn't have to worry so much about Superman, but they couldn't go 'til they got Jason."

"Forensics found fragments of fake kryptonite out of Gotham down in the bunker, burned and flakey," he sighed. "They were warding off Superman. Luckily they had the wrong stuff."

Lois nodded once, thinking. They sat in silence for a moment, both looking at Jason.

"Clark, I'm almost certain Luthor is the Boss."

"I think you're probably right."

They sat in silence again.

"What day is it?" Lois finally asked, seeing the morning sun peeking out from around the edge of the curtained window.

"Sunday, July first," Clark said, appearing to stare at the curtains but really looking through them at the sunrise. "Superman brought you here yesterday just before four, grabbed me while I was at Le Bistro getting everybody dinner," he released her hand to put his on the other side of her hip so that he could lean in a more comfortable position. She was reclining on her multitude of hospital pillows, sipping her water. "Your parents got here around six, left at ten. Perry came with them, left after about an hour when the doctors said you'd be fine and just had to sleep off the massive sedative Bill's thugs gave you. He and I checked in on Richard before he left. He's all set to be released with a nice bag full of pill bottles to take from every couple of hours and strict orders to rest as much as possible."

"That's good," Lois said, smiling and nodding weakly, taking another hit from her oxygen mask.

"He'll have a helluva scar, but he'll be fine," she nodded again. "Jason didn't want to leave you, so I offered to stay. We're lucky the night nurse has grandkids."

"I'll have to thank her," Lois swallowed. "I couldn't… I mean, they said they wanted Jason for an _experiment_…"

"He's fine, Lois. He's right there."

They paused and looked at their son.

"Thank you, Clark," Lois said, her voice sturdier than he'd heard it since she'd woken up, she sat up slightly, bracing herself with her elbows. His eyebrow lifted curiously. "You're just always here when I need you most, even if I throw things at you and cuss you out and order you around like my personal slave. Just—thanks."

"Yeah," Clark said after a weighted pause in which they stared at each other, hazel eyes meeting unearthly blue, faces hardly a foot apart. Lois nodded once, awkwardly accepting that that was as far as they would go.

Then Clark kissed her.

As far as Lois was concerned, it was her third kiss with Clark Kent. There had been that one time after their first encounter with Joe's traitorous nature, and that one time that hardly counted under the mistletoe at the _Planet_'s annual Christmahannukwazika party when nobody was looking. She liked kissing him.

"Don't," Clark whispered against her lips between kisses, her hand that wasn't holding the cup of water and hooked into the IV finding its way to the back of his head to keep him close. "Don't ever," he kissed her nose and eyelids and cheeks before her lips again. "Don't ever do that to me again," they paused for a breath. "Ever, ever."

Lois held his face close to hers, pressing their foreheads together, eyes closed.

"I couldn't bear to lose you, Lois."

Lois's breath hitched in her throat and pressed her lips to his again. She had been tossing and turning in her bed a mere twenty-four hours previous _wishing_ something remained of Clark's old dorky crush on her and mourning its loss. The past six months with him had been more platonic than their relationship had ever been. She hadn't realized how much she had enjoyed toying with Clark and his crush until the crush no longer exited; she'd lived without Clark for long enough, five years—long enough to realize exactly what she'd missed most about him, to herself at least, when he got back.

The earlier kiss had been tender, if desperate; loving. The kiss after Clark's short phrase was passionate, Lois trying to tell him without words just how much she _didn't_ want to be away from him. It was Lois's tongue that first saught entrance to Clark's mouth, but Clark's that first pulled a moan from Lois's throat.

They broke apart, coming to their senses when the cold metal of Lois's engagement ring touched Clark's cheek.

Clark took her hand in his hands again, both of them staring at the emerald set in the gold band. She had told him once, when she had been drunk and thought he was too, that if she were ever engaged she'd want a sapphire in a platinum setting, but that she'd want the man buying it for her to know that and didn't plan on telling him. It had broken Clark's heart at the time because she was telling _him_ what she wanted, obviously holding him separate from any potential fiancés.

He kissed the ring, holding her hand carefully in his, and looked her in the eye sadly. "I'm sorry, Lois," he said slowly. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Clark," Lois said, her voice small, tight, and scratchy. She took a breath from the mask. "_Don't_ apologize," her eyes pleaded with him. "_Please_ don't apologize."

"Lois…"

She shook her head.

Clark dropped her hand and scooted to a more 'friend appropriate' distance, looking at the door. They both could clearly hear somebody coming down the hall. Clark prayed what was left of Lois's lipstick hadn't transferred to his face as the door opened to reveal Perry, looking tired and disgruntled, in the doorway.

"Good, you're awake," he truly did sound relived, noticing Jason asleep on the chair and keeping his voice down.

"Hey, Chief," Lois said, coughing slightly and having a sip of water. Clark watched her carefully, concerned for her throat. He could see into her trachea and bronchials, it didn't look comfortable. He wasn't sure, though, if the cough was her worrying about what their editor-in-chief and the uncle of her fiancé had seen, or if it really was her throat needing liquid.

"How are you feeling?"

"Peachy."

"Good, has Kent told you the plan yet?"

"Er, n-not yet, Chief," Clark said, scooting a bit away from Lois's hip so that he could see Perry better.

"What's kept you?"

"She woke up hardly a minute ago!" Lois was surprised at how earnest he sounded. He was a much better liar that she had ever thought possible. Perry frowned.

"I'm gonna go get the nurse and Richard, you have five minutes," he gave Clark a significant look and strode out the door with purpose.

"There's a _plan_?" Lois asked, an eyebrow arcing.

"Perry wants us out of Metropolis," he said it quickly, almost hoping she wouldn't quite process the fact that they wouldn't be following up on their story until they were gone. Her other eyebrow arced to join its sister and he accepted that talking fast hadn't helped.

"And off the story?" She ground out.

"Sort of."

"You've got about thirty seconds before I roll over and pretend to have a coma so that I miss the train outta here."

"You don't _have_ a coma—you 'slip into' one."

"Twenty-nine, twenty-eight…"

"Fine," he sighed, forcing down a smile. "Perry is sending you and me and Jason and Richard to Smallville. For safekeeping, I suppose. There's internet access and phones," he rolled his eyes upon her completely aghast look. "We can continue research from afar, but we'll be _way_ out of the way of those trying to kill us and kidnap Jason," adding Jason in there was the clincher, he knew, but she'd pretend to resist, at least in front of Perry, for another few minutes. "The house is big; there'll be plenty of room for everybody. Metropolis P.D. already has protection in place for the people listed on the poster, and your parents."

"How are we getting there?" Lois asked, almost grudgingly.

"The doctors don't want to release you and Richard until tonight—the only reason they're letting him walk around is because he plans to leave tomorrow and they want to make sure everything is okay with him moving around. The only flight to Kansas that doesn't involve a half dozen switches leaves just after noon, so we'll be spending the night at a friend in Gotham's, and I'll be flying out early in the morning to help Mom move around some furniture, then I'll meet you at the airport in Topeka."

"So, we're escaping from the madmen trying to kill us by going to Gotham, where they're buying the stuff to make it easier to kill us with…" Lois said, biting her lip and nodding slowly, giving him a look.

"Well, we're going to make it look like we never left the hospital."

"How's that?"

"One of the EMTs, one we've interviewed before… Jim—something… Harris. Jim Harris offered to drive us out in his ambulance, and has it set up with the police department to have it look like they're transferring critical patients to the Gotham hospital for their superior cardiology department or something. Then we get lost in the crowd, get on the train, sleep a bit—you even get to sleep in—and we're all in Smallville by dinner tomorrow," Clark said, nodding smugly to himself. "I think Mom's making her homemade chicken rice soup and fresh bread. It's delicious."

"But the story's here, Clark," Lois protested, leaning back against her pillows heavily. She had been breathing through the mask while he explained the plan to her, her voice sounding less grainy after she pulled it away, though it quickly degraded again. "Bill and his men are on the move, the kids are out in the open. A lead-lined U-Haul! Superman can hardly miss that!" She sighed, sipping water. "We have the best leads since this whole thing started…!"

"Lois, we're reporters, not the police," he reminded her gently, almost chiding. She glared.

"You sound like Perry."

"Probably because that's exactly what I said to him when he protested when I first suggested this plan," Perry said, holding the door open to let Richard in. He was walking slowly and stiffly, not having been up and about in a week. He pulled an IV stand with him, keeping his left arm carefully still; not that he could move it very easily with all the bandaging. Clark x-rayed the shoulder, glad to see that things were patching together well. He figured it must be throbbing horribly, though.

Lois shot her boss a sharp glare, but didn't protest any more.

- - -

"Jason, I've got a present for you," Perry said, beckoning to his great-nephew from across the room. The four men were gathered in Lois's room, waiting for her to emerge from the adjacent restroom where she was changing into fresh street clothes. Clark and Richard had been talking about the latest police report, having gotten it from one of the detectives after she'd finished taking Lois's statement. Jason, who had risen a few hours after Clark and quickly hugged his mother almost too tightly, had been coloring in his almost-filled Superman coloring book and was ready for a distraction.

"Really?" He asked, practically skipping over to Perry's side. He had been in a much better mood now that his mother was safe, buoyed by the presence of all the adults he trusted—even Mister Jimmy had visited for a brief stetch in the afternoon, bringing the healthy ones lunch and laughing along as Lois endured hospital jello, Richard even laughing because he was used to it after a week. Clark had arrived a half hour later with a bag of takeout for them, having left shortly after Jason had woken. They'd saved the bag he'd brought for dinner, reheating it in the microwave in the staff lounge.

Perry pulled a small, square package out of his pocket and crouched down next to Jason as he eagerly tore the paper off. "Wow, a camera! Thanks Uncle Perry!" Jason said, opening the box beneath the paper to find a simple camera, film already loaded. "Look, Mom! A camera! Now I can take pictures of Uncle Clark's farm!" Jason was practically vibrating with excitement, his smile wide. Everybody turned to look up, not having noticed Lois had re-entered the room.

Richard wondered when Clark had gone from Mr. Clark to Uncle Clark, but didn't say anything.

"That's great, sweety," Lois said, smiling warmly.

"There's extra film in the box, too," Perry told Lois, handing her the remains of the box that Jason had abandoned to run around the room looking at things through the lens.

"Thanks, Chief—I think," Lois said, taking the two extra rolls out of the box and shaking her head.

"Well, that way he won't die of boredom out there," Perry chuckled, getting a scowl from Clark and a hoarse laugh from Lois.

"If anybody dies of boredom, it'll be _me_," she protested.

"C'mon, guys…" Clark protested half-heartedly.

"Ready?" Jim Harris, the ambulance driver, asked, appearing in the doorway.

"I think we're set," Perry said, looking over the others in the room. Clark had his bag from the White house, having stopped back there briefly to change into dark jeans and a plain t-shirt, packing the Suit away in the hidden pocket so he'd have one less thing to stress about when they made it to the train station. Perry had been to Lois and Richard's house on Riverside and packed bags for them and Jason, Jason helping, especially when it came to the medicines he would be needing—the number of prescriptions made out in Jason's name wasn't as large as it had been only a year ago, but it was still a higher number than Perry's total pill intake, and that included the herbal supplements Alice insisted he swallow every morning. Richard had a thick dressing on his shoulder and a little bag full of the medicine he was supposed to be taking and extra bandages. Lois had her own small new bag full of new health-aides, including a tiny oxygen tank, just in case, and an inhaler to match Jason's.

"Alright, then; I have good news and I have bad news for you, Miss Lane, before we head out," Harris said, hiding a smirk.

"Alright…" Lois said uncertainly.

"Good or bad first?"

"Good. I _need_ some good news," she smiled nervously.

"You're going to be fine. Lots of rest and fresh air and you'll be back to normal in no time… just keep the inhaler with you."

"And the bad news?"

"You're _never_ allowed to smoke again."

Clark burst out laughing at the look of pure horror on her face. She directed the look at him and threw then pen she'd found in her pocket. He easily got out of the way of the pen-turned-projectile, tripping on the nearest chair when his escape looked _too_ easy. Jason laughed.

"Superman is going to _die_ laughing," Lois mumbled, head in her hands as she shook it. Clark chuckled weakly, the statement sobering him. Richard and Perry, though, found it as hilarious as Clark had found the first announcement.

- - -

The ride to the train station was quicker than any ride through Metropolis any of them had ever experienced while conscious. Jim had the sirens going as part of their cover, whistling a happy tune as he sped around corners at speed that made even Lois nervous, but had Jason grinning like a madman. Clark imagined that that was what his own face had looked like the first time he'd really flown.

They arrived at the station and boarded their train so fast Clark wasn't sure they'd made it through security. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had ridden the train out of Metropolis; usually he just flew. Lois still looked peeved to have to give up the chase, but she kept looking at Jason worriedly, keeping him close. She wouldn't look at Clark, or Richard. Jim was the only one who noticed, pulling away in his ambulance and shaking his head without having said anything.

Perry saw them to the train, getting a last hug from his great-nephew and Lois, handshakes from Clark and Richard. He left as soon as they disappeared into the car, having to go back to his house to make a report to his wife and the Lanes.

Clark ended up on the aisle seat, to his relief. Lois was right next to him, then Jason, Richard on the inside to keep the two with the widest shoulders apart.

They were on a train to get off the island, headed for Staten Island. They'd take a taxi across Staten Island and then the ferry to the mainland, where they'd catch a second train on an express route to Gotham. The whole trip would take a number of hours, giving Jason and the pair of recovering adults a chance to rest, and Clark a chance to think.

The first thing he decided was that the wiser choice would've been to let Bruce send the helicopter like he'd first offered.

He wouldn't let himself think about what had happened in the hospital room that morning, following Lois's lead. They hadn't had a chance to talk yet; and Clark had learned his lesson last time—talking to Lois before making his move generally seemed to turn out better for the both of them. She seemed to have forgotten about it, but he caught her staring at him a number of times with a small smile on her lips that he had only seen directed his way for a few brief days five years ago. Worrying about it 'til they got a private moment wouldn't help. Sitting next to her wasn't exactly helping, though.

He wouldn't let himself extend his hearing past the inside of their car, knowing better.

He roused them when they reached the Staten Island station, carrying a sleepy Jason and the heaviest of the bags. The cab ride across the suburban island wasn't very exciting. Jason fell back into a comfortable slumber on Lois's lap, pressed tight against Clark's shoulder. The three adults were pressed shoulder to shoulder in the back seat, the driver ornery bordering on hostile when it was suggested Clark take the passenger seat.

Jason woke for the ferry ride, watching the sun set behind the Statue of Liberty as they passed by; he had dozens of questions about the statue which the adults tried to answer, Clark fielding most of them.

The second train ride was the longer one. Clark let himself doze, always keeping an ear out for those around him, and for any who passed by, not wanting their baggage in the above rack to disappear because his eyelids felt like bricks.

While everybody else had been sitting around Lois's hospital room, he had been talking to the police and doing a bit of his own investigating.

He had flown over Metropolis, scanning every single U-Haul and finding nothing. None of them were lead lined. The most exciting thing he found was a huge stash of nearly pure marijuana in one of the trucks. He'd alerted the Narcotics division of Metropolis P.D., making their collective day—they'd been chasing the dealer, who was about to move to California, for the better part of a year.

Defeated, he'd stopped at Le Bistro, Lois's favorite soup and sandwich place, and bought food for everybody despite knowing that Jimmy had brought them all Chinese.

The train slowed to a stop, waking Clark immediately. He looked around, checking everything over. Lois, Richard, and Jason were stirring in their seats; the luggage was still on the upper rack where they'd left them.

_Relax a bit, Kent_, Clark thought, rolling his eyes at himself.

He roused his companions and they gathered their stuff, Jason waking up completely, excited—this was Gotham, after all, home of the Bat-Man. Just because his dad was Superman didn't mean it wasn't an exciting prospect to have a chance to meet another superhero.

Night had fallen while they were on the train. By falling asleep, Clark had missed one of his favorite views. Gotham at night, from above at least, was a beautiful sight. The general deterioration that had been its constant state for the better part of three decades had surrendered to Bruce's efforts in and out of the Suit. As Batman, he had driven fear into the hearts and minds of criminals, breaking up the long-standing system of power, beginning with Carmine Falcone and his underlings. A new 'mob boss' of sorts had risen and fallen just as quickly, and no one man had risen to the position since. Several often warring factions within the criminal population were a good thing as opposed to the alternative. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne had rebuilt his public image, making a joke out of his supposed drunken antics—every party he'd thrown since the scare in the Narrows ended just before eleven. He'd suffered as the butt of many jokes, lost a good many supporters, and tarnished his father's image, but he'd continued on. Bruce and Alfred had rebuilt the manor to their own specifications, taking on a good deal of the construction themselves, at least in the southeast corner. Years had passed, Bruce was back in the public's favor as well as the good graces of his socialite comrades. He nurtured the playboy image, but ran his father's company well—or left it in the hands of a man, Lucius Fox, who ran it well—and donated to all the right causes, mostly anonymously, to continue to better the city. Gotham's monorail-type train had been the first thing he repaired after Wayne Manor. The city was famous for the train because it was such a visible part of the cityscape. That was part of what made the view one of Clark's favorite: skyscrapers rising from the hazy orange glow of street lamps below and up, up out of sight all around. Through the windows of the train, one could see every aspect of the city, though only if one knew where to look. Clark had toured the city with Batman himself and certainly knew where to look. He could see the regal outline of Wayne Tower at the center of the city surrounded by other skyscrapers, still dwarfing them all—due to city ordinance more than architectural preference. He could also spot, though, the busiest prostitution corners and the back alleys where more drugs were moved every night than in a week in Metropolis.

The train came to a final halt and the four of them made their way down a few flights of rickety metal stairs to ground level where a tall, elderly man with thinning white hair in a very nice black suit leaned against a limo. He stood when he saw Clark, smiling.

"Master Kent, very good to see you again," he said in a crisp English accent.

"Alfred," Clark smiled, holding out a hand to shake; Alfred Pennyworth used both of his hands to shake Clark's. "It's been a long time."

"Six years-ish," Clark said, pushing his glasses up his nose with a goofy grin. Alfred smiled back, resisting the urge to shake his head.

- - -

"Why didn't you tell me you knew _Bruce Wayne_?" Lois hissed. The four of them were in the back of the limo with the screen up separating them from Alfred. Clark knew the elder man could hear them anyway and couldn't help but glance through the screen at the reflection in the rearview mirror. The old butler was very good at hiding his smile, but Clark knew him better than most people.

"Er, yeah," he shrugged, the gesture making the space look smaller than it was. Lois made her eyes bigger, gesturing for more information. Clark sighed, rolling his eyes. Jason giggled. "I met Bruce in Tibet when I was twenty… five?" He shrugged. "Quite a while ago."

_Flashback:_

_Clark was happily tired. That was one thing about living in the huge, temple-like ninja training center that Ras al-Guhl lorded over; it tired him out. The work wasn't just the physical stuff, like on the farm. Sure, there was the training with different types of weapons, sparring with the other trainees. But there was also the intellectual side of the experience. It wasn't like traditional learning. The texts were in a variety of languages, mostly Chinese, though a few of the smaller journals were in one of the various Himalayan languages. Clark had found that he had a mind for languages on his travels and enjoyed spending the hours of the night he didn't need to sleep, he was able to get tired over the course of the day but he still didn't need as many hours as humans. He told Ducard, the only person he really talked to of all those he'd met, he was an insomniac. _

_He'd spent the morning, starting with the sunrise as usual, in the library reading the books and journals. It was all incredibly interesting, if somewhat disturbing. He was withholding judgment until he'd read all there was to read and learned all they could teach him. He'd been traveling the world for a year, learning a lot about many different cultures. He'd never found a faction quite like the one Ras al-Guhl ruled over. His intellectual side was at war with his morality whenever he let himself think about it. _

_They called themselves the League of Shadows and they claimed responsibility for destroying an incredible number of cultures among other morally reprehensible acts. They had their own justice, usually based in vengeance or their own interpretation of what was best for mankind at large. _

_He sighed, not wanting to follow that train of thought again. _

_After his morning in the library, he'd worked with sabers with the newcomer. Ducard had taken special interest in the man, who was probably a year or two younger. Clark didn't recognize him, but hadn't really expected to. He was sharply aware, though, that his arrival meant there were three non-Asian members of the League of Shadows. _

_Near-silent footsteps alerted him to the approach of the newcomer; his footsteps were the only ones Clark hadn't memorized yet. In a place like the temple, Clark was always watching his back. Especially because Ducard was training fifty men to blend into the surroundings and kill without a sound. _

"_Hey," the newcomer said, taking a seat next to him and handing over a bowl of the gruel of the day. _

"_Good afternoon," Clark said quietly, taking the bowl with a nod. He scanned it carefully once. In his time with the League of Shadows nobody had tried to poison or kill him—and there were times when it had been possible, as he kept a tiny shard of kryptonite in his pocket to make him vulnerable, avoiding questions particularly during practice with weapons. That didn't mean he trusted any of the other black clothed, lethally armed 'gentlemen' sleeping in the barracks. _

"_So… how long've you been in this place?" The man asked, his accent pinning him for an American, probably from the East Coast, though Clark hadn't spent enough time there to recognize it. _

"_Almost a month."_

"_Really? You were good earlier, for just having been here a month," the other man observed. _

"_I'm a quick learner," Clark shrugged, amiably taking a bite of the gruel. The other man nodded, eating a few spoonfuls of his own meal before introducing himself._

"_I'm Bruce W… Bruce."_

"_Clark," Clark replied, his lip quirking to one side. "So, where're you from, Bruce? Obviously not around here."_

"_No, I'm from Gotham. I haven't been back in years, though."_

"_Big city," Clark nodded. "I thought so."_

"_So where are you from?"_

"_A farm in Kansas," Clark couldn't help but smile at the man's reaction. _

"_I wouldn't have pegged you for a farm boy."_

"_Well, we all wear masks here, anyway."_

They'd trained together in the months that followed until Clark parted ways with Ducard and the League of Shadows. The parting had been violent, though only witnessed by a few. Bruce was one of the few—those few were the only people who had ever seen Clark _really_ mad. He'd completed a significant portion of the library, enough to decide to not be a part of the League of Shadows, no matter how many books from his childhood epitomize the character of the ninja.

Bruce hadn't understood the entire encounter, as it had been conducted in one of the variations of the Tibetan language, but it wasn't hard to guess what had been happening when the usually stoic Clark, and superior Ducard had been bellowing at the tops of their lungs at each other. Clark's eyes had even taken on a reddish tinge briefly, though only Bruce had really noticed the flare and had had no idea what to make of it.

Clark and Bruce had crossed paths once more before Bruce Wayne had returned to Gotham, causing the city's biggest stir since he'd disappeared. It had been at a small, isolated restaurant in Portugal. Clark had been making his way back to the States, thinking about visiting the East Coast states Bruce had told him so much about before returning to Smallville. They'd reconnected, Clark ending up promising Bruce he'd visit in Gotham when he passed through, and he had. Their friendship had only grown as Batman and Superman emerged and they found they had more in common than they had ever suspected when trying to slice each other with sabers at two in the morning when neither could sleep.

"Earth to Clark," Lois was saying, giving him a hard poke in the knee cap

"Sorry, what?"

"You met Bruce Wayne in Tibet?"

"Yeah, when I traveled the world the frist time."

"Yeah, yeah, I remlember _those_ stories. You just failed to mention Bruce Wayne and Tibet," she had one eyebrow arched, giving him as severe a look as she could when she was so obviously keen for more information.

"He had been declared dead then," Clark said distractedly, remembering. "We were roommates in a sort of temple place for a few months."

Lois was about to say something more, but the limo pulled to a stop and Alfred lowered the screen, turning to smile at them.

"Welcome to Wayne Manor, everybody," he gestured out the side window at the beautiful, brightly lit mansion.

**Can I get a lot of feedback on this chapter, please? On every little thing-- especially the Clois angle coming to fruition and the whole thing with the League of Shadows and Bruce Wayne. That'd be great. **

**Also, sorry to report that this will, more than likely, be the last chapter until mid-January. It's finals week and then I'll be at home, working full time, with no internet access through my laptop. With any luck I'll have a nice, long chapter when 'winter' break ends :) Thanks ahead of time for the input, I really appreciate it. Everybody have a great holiday season ;)**


	14. Chapter 14

**Hey, everybody! Holy cow, it's been a long time since I was able to update. Geez. Well, I'm back at school for spring semester, joy of joys, and hopefully I'll have internet back on my laptop soon. Looking forward to that—I just have to bring it to the tech guys sometime this week so they can force the anti-virus spyware stuff to update and therefore get the school's stupid internet access program to accept my codes. Having tons of fun with that. **

**Anyway, enjoy the chapters—they were fifty pages long altogether before I got the spacing worked out… I guess you could say I had a lot of downtime over break—it was quite nice :) More good news: I've got the rest of the story basically planned out now, so once my internet gets working properly and this new semester settles into a routine updates should be more regular.**

**- - -**

**A brief summary because it's been so darn long: Richard is recovering from a gunshot wound, Lois just spent a day and night in the hospital after Superman pulled her out of an underground bunker for smoke inhalation. There's a hit out on Lois and Clark—Perry decided it wasn't safe for them to be in Metropolis. With some help, the pair of them, Richard, and Jason 'disappeared' from Met. General and took several trains and a taxi to Gotham to spend the night at Wayne Manor before heading to Smallville to hide out. As it is, they just arrived at the mansion. **

Richard, Lois, and Jason trailed behind Alfred as he showed them through the mansion. Alfred had brought the bags directly to the two bedroom guest suite the three of them would be spending the night in, then met them in the foyer to begin the tour. Bruce had met them there, introducing himself, graciously turning away their thanks and the outpouring of compliments on his richly but tastefully decorated foyer. Clark and Bruce had gone in the opposite direction when Alfred had begun the tour, ending up in the study off Bruce's bedroom (as opposed to his more public study located on the ground floor).

"Thank you, again, Bruce, for putting us up for the night," Clark said when the door was closed behind them.

"Anything I can do to help," Bruce smirked; "I owe you enough to keep me paying you back 'til my dying day."

"Bruce," Clark rolled his eyes. He had gotten his rich friend out of more than a few sticky situations, in both personas. "That's a bit of an exaggeration…"

"No, think about it: you did all the work on the foundation improvements, you saved my skin that time with the Joker, and that second time with the Joker, then there was that time when every paper in the _world_ was after an interview and you figured out all the wording…"

"I still think it's an exaggeration."

"Doesn't matter what you think," Bruce informed him, and Clark chuckled before lapsing into a contemplative silence. "What's on your mind?"

Clark sat in one of the plush leather chairs in front of the desk, spending another moment in silence before speaking. He'd told Bruce everything he knew when he'd visited to get permission to bring the others to spend the night, while Lois was still in the drug-induced recuperative sleep and Perry had come to the decision that they shouldn't be in Metropolis anymore. Lois's waking information had changed things, though.

"Lois overheard the men who kidnapped her talking about Jason."

"What about him?" Bruce prompted immediately, taking the other seat on the far side of the desk and facing his friend.

"They were _supposed_ to have kidnapped Jason, not Lois. The Boss—we're pretty sure that's Luthor, no solid evidence, though—had ordered them to kidnap him so that they could get on with the experiments. Apparently the entire purpose of kidnapping any kids at all was for some sort of an experiment."

"Then why did they kill that girl?"

"I don't know. She was more trouble than she was worth? I can't say I really understand the way these… _people_ think," he sighed, leaning back in the chair and running a distressed hand through his hair. It stuck up at even weirder angles than it normally did, Superman's rebellious curl falling forward onto his forehead in more prominence. Bruce watched without speaking for another moment.

"If it's Lex Luthor, you know _exactly _how he thinks."

"We can't make that assumption."

"You can use it to your advantage," Bruce said calmly. Clark sat in his chair, glasses in one hand, the other balled into a fist supporting his chin. Bruce stood and poured them each generous helpings of brandy in expensive cups, adding ice to his own. He held Clark's out in front of the Kryptonian's face for a moment before Clark took it. Bruce was surprised when the man didn't finish it off in a single gulp, instead having a thoughtful sip, staring darkly at the desk.

"It's my fault, Bruce—_I_ left Lois and Jason here alone, Lois didn't trust me enough when I came back to take me with her to the Vanderworth estate and onto the yacht, which ended up being how Luthor found out about Jason. Now all these kids have been taken away from their families because _that sick man_ wants to use them in an experiment against my son…"

"Yes, it is all your fault," Bruce agreed. Clark turned startled eyes up to his friend, getting a gravely smirk and steady eyes. "Now what are you going to do about it?"

- - -

Lois lay on the perfectly soft mattress, drowning in the down comforter and well-fluffed pillows. Jason was sound asleep against her side, acting as a miniature heater. That was one similarity to his father she didn't mind—the huge strange house was freezing, the air conditioner working overtime to counteract the summer's warmth that only faded slightly with the night. She sighed, thoughts of Jason's father brought to mind her romantic life at large, her _complicated_ romantic life.

She'd never been much for thinking of her love life, or anybody else's for that matter, in great depth. She'd never really had one until college, anyway. All the girls she'd gone to high school with had been obsessed with boys and couples—who was doing what with who, who wasn't doing what, what the other person thought of that, who was single, why they were single, how long they'd been single… She'd been the quiet one, shying away from those conversations, doing her homework, _refusing_ to do her friends' homework unless they paid her a hearty sum. She'd never admit that last bit to Clark, though, as it would spoil her jibes at him for being a geek.

She'd had one boyfriend in high school, and he'd dumped her because she wouldn't put out—apparently her self-confidence and ability to speak to boys had everybody thinking she was sexually superior, probably having lost her virginity to one of the military men under her father's command. She didn't comment on those rumors, graduating a virgin.

College had been another game entirely. Relationships were more serious, more _real_ in her opinion. Her roommate, Abby Swartz—the girl she'd roomed with for all four years, obsessed with kung-fu movies and even more cynical than Lois, and was still in contact with though she lived in Washington state with her accountant husband and four kids—made it her life goal to set Lois up with a suitable guy to get the virginity thing over with. Lois had, reluctantly, allowed it and fallen in love with a sophomore math major named Warren Dexter. He'd broken her heart; she'd sworn off the male sex and taken over the school newspaper. That worked really well until she'd hired a guy named Colin Williams as an ads manager and he'd taken her out on three dates before she'd even realized what was happening. She'd dated Colin through college, even fantasizing about spending the rest of her life with him. Abby had thought she'd lost her mind and was happy for her.

Then Colin had told her he was gay.

She'd cried for a long time, consumed more cookie dough ice cream than she'd ever admit to, and moved to a tiny apartment in downtown Metropolis and took Perry White up on the job offer he'd left standing since her last summer interning at the _Daily Planet_. It had been the one between her junior and senior years at college when he'd just risen to the position of editor-in-chief.

At her entry-level job at the _Planet_ and all the way through to the day she'd gone to Niagara Falls with Clark, she'd only casually dated a few guys she came across at work. There was nothing serious, no sex—that tended to put a few guys who took her out off.

Suffice to say, she'd never been in quite so complicated a situation so far as her love life was concerned.

First, there was Richard. The man who had been her rebound from Superman even though she hadn't known she'd been on the rebound. What she'd meant to be a one night stand had turned into a five year relationship, a three year prolonged engagement. They'd raised a son together. She'd _thought_ she was happy. He'd stuck to her even though, she knew, her behavior bordered on intolerable from time to time; she was hell to deal with when she was chasing down a lead, especially when she was learning to be a mother at the same time.

Then there was Superman. He'd _left_ her. She hadn't even known they'd been together, which was another thing that was his fault. She had never crushed over somebody so hard as she had over him. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined ever having more than a professional relationship with him, and that was all she could stand to have after. She would always trust him—how could she not?—but he had betrayed her, and she couldn't trust him with her _heart_.

_Then_, there was Clark. He'd been her best friend for years. He had said goodbye before leaving, even sent post cards (even though they had been vague and cheesy). He had stepped back into the space he, and Superman, had left and filled the space amazingly well. He got along with Jason better than anybody but Richard. And she liked him. A lot. He was _Clark_. He was safe, he was trustworthy, he was comfortable, he was uncomplicated, he was, not _harmless_, but secure. And she really liked him.

But she was engaged to Richard. Richard was stable. He presented a traditional lifestyle, he was part of her and Jason's routines. But he wasn't Clark.

_When did I start comparing Richard to Clark? When did I _stop_ comparing him to Superman?_

She had kissed Clark, though. _That_ even her restless mind wasn't ready to think about yet.

Lois snorted, slipping away from Jason and tucking the mass of blankets around him. He hardly stirred. Despite his nap on the train ride, the stress of the past few days and the excitement of the tour of the mansion had exhausted him enough to put him straight to sleep. He wouldn't wake 'til morning short of natural disaster.

She dug through her suitcase until she found her robe and put it on before padding out into the house, glad for the fluffy slipper-socks she'd put on before bed, knowing she'd get complaints from Jason about her cold toes if she didn't. He'd insisted on sleeping with her because it was a new place and he was still shaken up about her recent kidnapping.

For lack of anything better to do while her mind tumbled over itself and kept her awake, Lois began wandering. She was drawn through the house by a strange clanging noise. She remembered the basics from the tour with Alfred—there was a bathroom as part of their suite, but the other 'public' bathroom was down the hall to the left; Bruce's bedroom was in an entirely different wing of the house that she wasn't sure she could find if she tried; Clark was staying a few doors down from the other bathroom, she didn't have the guts to poke her head in and see if he was asleep; Alfred slept in a room on the ground floor she hadn't been shown; the rest of the rooms on the ground floor were common areas, the kitchen, the dining room, the ballroom, Bruce's study, a few rooms that reminded her of a museum…

The clanging was coming from downstairs, so she found some stairs and went down them. Following the noise led her to a part of the house she wasn't familiar with, feeling like an investigative journalist for the first time since her kidnapping. There were voices along with the clanging, two deep men's voices, a third that wasn't quite as deep and had a British accent.

_So Clark wouldn't have been in his room if I'd peeked._

The door looked like any other in the house, big and wooden with a bit of decorative carving to label it apart from the bedrooms, and it wasn't locked. Lois let herself in.

The room beyond was huge. The main floor was the size and situation of half a high school gymnasium, the other third of the room was taken up by stadium-style benches also reminiscent of a high school gym, though the benches were wider than those she'd seen in any high school and more comfortable-looking. There was a single door on the far wall, open to reveal a dark closet space within. Alfred sat in the bleachers a few rows up, talking though Lois couldn't make out the specific words over the clanging of the blades in Bruce and Clark's hands.

The gym floor was padded, boundaries for sports Lois didn't know in paint on the pads. Clark and Bruce were paying them no attention, though it didn't look like they were using traditional blades. Fencing rapiers lay, hilts out, on the level of bleachers closest to the mats next to Clark's glasses. The swords Bruce and Clark were using looked like Samurai swords to Lois's eyes, curved slightly with two-handed grips. The men wore dark grayish body suits and boots, Clark's gloves were red, Bruce's were black. To protect their eyes, both wore ridiculous-looking sports goggles.

It wasn't their appearances that surprised Lois, though, it was their talent with the blades they were handling. They never stood still. Always moving. Always feinting in one direction or the other, always moving to catch the other feinting. The sabers whistled through the air as the men twitched them this way and that, clanging together and making sparks in some cases. Lois's first instinct was to warn them that they were going to poke each others' eyes out, then she remembered the God-awful goggles. Her chuckle attracted Alfred's attention and Clark's head seemed to twitch, but he was distracted immediately by a blade that swished past his head; he twisted with agility Lois had long suspected he possessed and equally as long doubted her suspicion.

"Agh! Almost gotcha," Bruce growled, dancing away from Clark's returning swipe. Clark chuckled deep in his throat, backing off a bit to circle around. Bruce crouched, pivoting around to keep Clark in sight.

Lois wrapped her robe a little tighter and made her way over to sit next to Alfred. The butler had a sudoku book and pen, a large first aid kit sitting next to him, he was glancing up at the younger men fighting each time he filled in a square.

"Brave man," Lois observed as she sat down on the bleacher next to him. Alfred looked up, eyes twinkling though his face was curious.

"Why do you say that?"

"Filling out one of those things in pen."

Alfred raised an eyebrow, looking down at his sudoku book, the puzzle he was working on only had a few blank spaces left; he had only scratched out one number, changing a nine to a seven in the upper left box.

"It is more of a challenge in ink," Alfred said with a smile, glancing up with a harsh look when Bruce cried out at the center of the floor.

"_Fuck_ man," Bruce said, twisting away and looking at his forearm, where a thin line of red had swelled up.

"I win," Clark said, chuckling again before sticking his saber between his arm and his side to have free hands to have a look at the cut.

"You _always_ win, and you _always_ get me in the same freakin' place," Bruce said, halfway between a whine and a chuckle. He examined his arm, eyebrows creased.

"Yeah, well—suck it in," Clark ordered. Alfred was at their elbow with the first aid kit, ignoring their banter and handing Clark the antibacterial and a gauze pad. Bruce had pulled off the jacket, leaving only a sweaty tank top and his exposed bloody forearm.

"At least I don't need stitches this time," Bruce said, shrugging the arm that wasn't being treated by his friend. Clark finished taping the gauze in place and gave the bandage a not-so-gentle pat. Bruce pulled away, inspecting the arms momentarily. "Hey, you're pretty good at getting the bandaid in the right spot, but you suck at stitches."

"It didn't scar," Clark pointed out. Bruce rolled his eyes.

"Hurt like hell."

"But it didn't scar. What kind of a billionaire playboy would you be if you had a saber scar on your forearm?"

"A mysterious one," Bruce countered, having a last look at his forearm before taking a last piece of tape from Alfred and sticking it to the gauze.

"I'm sure you're a mysterious billionaire without saber scars, sir," Alfred observed, snapping the first aide kit closed and turning back toward where Lois was watching on the second bleacher.

"Nice goggles."

"Clark's are prescription," Bruce said with a grin, pulling off his goggles and managing to make his sweaty hair poke out at odd angles. Lois shook her head at him.

"Of course they are. He can't see a bloody thing without two inches of glass between him and the world."

Bruce let out a hearty guffaw at that, turning to give Clark a look. Clark rolled his eyes as he turned away, pulling off the goggles while he was facing away from Lois and putting on his regular glasses. He was all sweaty too, nice and tired; there was kryptonite in the thread of his fencing jacket, just enough to make him vulnerable and knock out his 'super' strength and speed. His hearing and vision weren't what they normally were when he wore the jacket either, though they weren't completely gone. He was prone to nosebleeds if he wore the jacket too long, and his joints usually ached after awhile.

He pulled the jacket off, tossing it on the bench next to the fencing swords and grabbed a water bottle. It was nice to be thirsty for once. Lois stared at his bare arms—he was wearing a tank top just the same as Bruce—and wondered if all farm boys had such well defined arms. Bruce saw the look and caught Clark's eye; Clark couldn't help but flush slightly, clearing his throat.

"So, what're you doing up, Lois?"

"Overactive mind, already been trapped in a bed for twenty-four hours, son's a living space heater and can't fall asleep," Lois shrugged, she was examining Alfred's discarded sudoku book with the penned in numbers. "You have too many nines."

"I have not," Alfred said, taking the book from her indignantly and looking over his numbers. "See, that's an eight," he pointed to one of the number she'd thought was his extra nine.

"Oh."

There was a silence while Alfred filled in the last few blank spaces of his puzzle and put the book in his inner coat pocket. "I'll go warm up the coffee, then, shall I, Master Wayne?"

"Thanks, Alfred," Bruce said, reclining on the lowest bleacher, lazily examining the grip of one of the fencing swords, the blade pointing down. He picked at a bit of nothing for a moment before putting it next to its partner and looking at the two standing awkwardly in the room with him.

Bruce wasn't used to seeing Clark so awkward; he wasn't sure if it was because Lois was there and he was acting the part of bumbling office-Kent, or if it was because Lois was there and he really was that inept around her. He cocked an eyebrow at Clark when Lois wasn't looking, getting the barest hint of a shrug in return.

"So, why're you two having coffee, of all things, warmed up for you at this late hour?" Lois asked, sighing dramatically and sitting down a ways away from Bruce, focusing her attention on Clark.

"Er…"

"Master Wayne, there's a call for you on the office line, sir," Alfred said, appearing in the doorway out of nowhere.

"Thank you, Alfred; I'll take it upstairs," Bruce said, getting to his feet and striding out the door with a glance at Clark. Clark had that distant look on his face that he got when he was listening to things far away, though the nearness of the kryptonite in his jacket significantly hindered his listening abilities.

"Would you two still like the coffee, Master Kent?"

"Yeah, I think so," Clark said, glancing at Lois. Every muscle in her body tensed at the glance. Alfred glanced between them before disappearing from the doorway after Bruce.

Clark turned away from Lois, unable to miss her racing pulse as it was one of the only things he could hear. Moving slowly, deliberately taking his time, Clark gathered the swords and his jacket, and brought them into the room at the far end of the gym. The lights blinked on when he entered, motion sensors. Lois could see more swords, antique-looking armor, a case of strange looking spiked daggers she could've sworn she'd seen in one of Abby's kung-fu movies.

Her interest was piqued. What would a playboy billionaire want with such old-fashioned weapons? What would he be doing playing dead in a temple in Tibet? What was Clark, of all people, doing there?

Clark was dreading his return to the main gym. They had a lot to get through; the question was how much they would actually talk about and how much they would be adding to the elephant growing between them.

Sucking it up, Clark walked out the door—his heightened senses and the usual fully charged feeling returning to him as soon as the kryptonite in the jacket was a room away—and locked the storage room behind him. Lois was still sitting on the lower bleacher, her posture distracted, thoughtful, and a little tired.

"Should I tell Alfred to put the coffee on the back burner 'til morning? I should probably shower before anything else, and we can always talk later if you'd rather just go to bed…?"

"No," Lois said decisively, her eyes taking on a determined light. "We should talk about—before,—before we get to Smallville."

"Y-yeah," Clark said, clearing his throat.

"I'll wait in the kitchen, then?"

"What?"

"While you shower. I'll wait in the kitchen."

"Oh. Okay, good idea."

They walked out, Clark turning to go toward the back stairs to get up to his room and his fresh clothes and the shower, but Lois stopped when they were outside the door.

"Er," she said, making Clark stop at the corner to look back at her, a questioning look on his face. "How do I get to the kitchen from here?"

Clark chuckled and gave her directions before taking the stairs two at a time and heading for his room.


	15. Chapter 15

Lois paced the kitchen, holding onto her coffee mug almost too tightly. Alfred had offered to stay and wait with her, but she'd sent him to bed. He'd left his sudoku book and pen, telling her there were pencils in the top drawer by the fridge. She had spent a few minutes staring at one of the puzzles and sipping her coffee before she'd started pacing, listening to the water run upstairs and waiting for it to shut off. Her nerves didn't settle in the least when the shower turned off.

Clark showered quickly, putting on his most 'Clark-ish' pajamas under his robe. The flannel had him unreasonably comfortable until he reached the doorway to the kitchen and let himself listen to her for a moment before making his presence known. Her heart was beating faster than normal; she was pacing nervously, chewing on her thumb nail while her coffee cooled on the counter. She was pacing perpendicular to him, but her focus was on the floor. She wore fluffy blue slipper socks that must have come from Jason (anybody else would have been hit and the socks returned), flannel pajama pants and a tank top beneath a black terrycloth robe; her hair was pulled back with Alfred's pen holding it secure at the nape of her neck.

"How was your shower?" Lois asked, her pacing slowing but not stopping.

"Wh-what?" Clark asked, not having realized she'd seen him. She stopped pacing, looking directly at him.

"How was your shower?"

"Oh, it was good… Thanks."

"Yeah," she had a drink of coffee. "The coffee's still hot. I'm sure there's another mug somewhere around here. It's not like he can't afford to keep a few extra…"

"He's the stingiest billionaire you'll ever meet," Clark said without really thinking, getting himself a mug from above the sink and filling it up. Lois sat down at the table again, moving the sudoku book aside.

"So," she said, her look meaning business, after he'd taken the chair next to her, turning it slightly to face her.

"So," he repeated.

They stared at each other for a few moments.

"You're my best friend, Lois; I don't want to mess that up," he said, his voice the closest to it's normal pitch he'd ever allowed in Lois's presence in either guise since those few days all those years ago. He couldn't bring himself to stutter, it was too important. He couldn't look at her, though, staring into his coffee instead. He took a drink to break the short silence that followed, Lois clearing her throat and checking the heat of her own coffee.

"You're my best friend, too, Clark, just—if things were different… things would be different," she wouldn't look at him either, staring into her coffee. Her body language suggested she was ashamed. Clark was torn. He wanted to comfort her, there was plenty he could say that could put her at ease—about half of it was true—but his instinct was to reach out to her. It was one instinct that came with his Kryptonian heritage—the urge to reach out and help wherever and whenever he could. It had been overpowering throughout his youth, and being on a farm hadn't helped. He heard the animals on slaughter days and when they would get hurt milling around in the field. It had gotten to the point, in his teenage years, when he had had to go into town and see a loud movie or walk around what had passed for a mall (before it had been torn down just before Jessica died to make way for a car dealership that had closed down and left a vacant parking lot after a year). His hearing had always had a way of picking up on every little thing in the place he was most familiar with—the farm he'd been raised on, the city he'd come to call home—and just taking in the big, loud things from everywhere else. After about a week of working with Lois, he'd begun listening to her sounds, hearing everything about her like he had heard everything on the Kent farmstead.

These were definitely distressed sounds.

He put a hand on her knee, taking it away after giving a short squeeze. Her heart rate jumped; he couldn't be sure why, exactly. If it was because he was touching her and she liked it, or because of that and she felt guilty.

"I'm the guilty party, Lois," he said quietly. She finally made eye contact. Something about the way she looked at him struck him—she had used that same look all those years ago, in the short time that she'd known the whole truth, to try to assuage his guilt over not being able to fly to the aid of those he saw on TV who could use his help. He felt even guiltier than he had before, couldn't hold eye contact; words tumbled out of him even as Lois opened her mouth to interrupt. "I'm sorry. I was raised better than that," he chuckled dryly. "I was—it was," he sighed, "it was my fault. You know—_everyone_ knows, knew at least—how I felt about you way back when, before I left. You're engaged, even if you've been fighting with him all the time these days, _and_ you have a son. You've got a family, Lois. I can't be… I _shouldn't_ be…" he cleared his throat, glancing up from his coffee. "I'm sorry, Lois."

"Clark," Lois finally managed to cut in when he ran out of steam. He looked into his coffee again as she spoke. "I kissed you back."

"I noticed," he almost said, snapping his mouth shut quickly to keep the words in.

"I'm sorry we're in this position," she said quietly. "You're right, I did know how you felt. The thing is… I really liked that you liked me, Clark. And I still do," she chuckled to herself. "Jason is my family. Richard… I don't even know where I stand with Richard right now. He was in the hospital for so long, and before that," she sighed. "I don't even know… He reacted so _badly_ when we found out Jason wasn't his," she sighed again, but it was more of a huff, then met Clark's eyes. "Please don't feel guilty. Please don't…" she bit her lip, cutting off the rest of her sentence. _Please don't leave_, she wanted to tell him.

They sat and looked at each other for a moment.

"Lois," Clark finally said, softly. They were sitting close, their knees practically touching. He reached out and touched her cheek, cupping it in his hand, thumb automatically tracing a circle on her skin. "I can't… We can't…" he sighed. "No matter what happens, we still have to show up for work every morning, and see… all the people," he cleared his throat. He'd been planning on mentioning Richard and Perry and Jason, in particular, instead of just 'people.'

"Nothing _can_ happen," Lois said forcefully, but she was leaning into his touch.

They sat like that for awhile, knees touching, Clark massaging her cheek with his thumb as she leaned toward him. Lois's eyes dropped closed, her breath hitching slightly in her throat. Clark moved his hand down, sliding it around to the back of her neck, and pulled her toward him until her forehead rested on his broad shoulder, Clark's thumb now massaging her neck.

After a short minute, Lois's already hitching breathing became deep, gasping breaths between sobs. Confused, Clark held her closer, bringing his other hand around to rub her back.

"Lois?"

"Sorry," she said between gasps.

"Lois," he half chuckled. "The General sure did a number on your head to get you so defensive about experiencing emotion."

That got a laugh out of her. A dry one, hardly a chuckle, but it could be classified as a laugh.

"You know better than most," she replied dryly, shifting so she was still leaning against him, her face turned into his neck.

"That's true," he said, his hand still on the back of her neck, the second on her shoulder, his fingertips playing with a curl that had strayed from her impromptu bun. Lois smirked.

_FLASHBACK _

_Ron Troupe took the plate of hamburger patties from his wife, pecking her on the lips with a smile. "Thanks much, Mrs. Troupe," he chimed, moving through to the far end of the dining room and out onto the back patio where Clark was fiddling with the grill, trying to figure out how to get it lit without heat vision. He finally got it just as Ron came out with the meat. "What, you've never used a gas grill before, Kent?" Ron asked lightly._

"_Only got charcoal back on the farm," Clark responded, standing up as straight as Clark Kent the office persona ever did. _

"_Figures."_

_The pair of them got things going on the grill while, inside, Lucy tried to talk Lois through sautéing onions and peppers. _

"_No, no—Lois! You don't—ugh!" Lucy groaned. "That's it. You're outta the kitchen. Go make sure the girls haven't built themselves a pipe bomb or something."_

"_Going, going," Lois said, throwing her hands up in defeat, smiling widely. "Don't go in there unless you know how to sautée things," she warned when Clark and Ron reentered the house. _

"_My sautéing abilities aren't nearly up to par," Ron admitted with a shrug. "Do you think the girls need tips on those pipe bombs?"_

"_Are you two psychically connected or something?" Lois asked, rolling her eyes at them. _

"_Nope, just married," Ron answered with a shrug. Clark chuckled, heading for the kitchen while Lois followed Ron up the stairs to the nursery-turned-playroom for the twins, Jennifer and Lola. They were identical twins, four years old; each with caramely cinnamon skin and dark curls. _

"_Did Lois tell you our parents are coming tonight?" Lucy said conversationally in the kitchen. _

"_Did _you_ tell Lois?" Clark asked. He'd been partnered with her for a year and heard enough horror stories about her childhood spread across various military establishments under the thumb of her colonel and then general father. _

"_Yes," Lucy replied coolly, smirking at him over her shoulder. "She's been whining to me about it for two weeks, since I told her I talked to Mom about it."_

"_That was you she's been on the phone with?" Clark asked, smiling. In truth, he'd heard most of the sisters' conversations over the past weeks, having to step out more than once in order to have a good laugh. Lucy nodded, continuing to cut carrots into kid-friendly pieces. _

"_I just thought I'd give you the heads-up that our father _is_ all that Lois has, I'm sure, told you about," Lucy said, cutting the carrots with a little more fervor, if anything. "He's going to be an asshole. He'll probably latch onto your most obvious nervous habit and run with it 'til he figures out what else to use to push your buttons."_

"_Sounds like fun," Clark said under his breath, giving the onions and peppers in the pan a stir. Lois joined them a moment later, watching her sister chop carrots, snagging a few for herself and getting a glare for her trouble. _

"_So Clark's sautéing abilities are up to par?" Lois asked, popping another carrot into her mouth. _

"_Clark happens to know how to cook," Lucy said, smacking her sister's hand with the flat of the blade when she tried for another carrot. Lois glared but folded her hands together and watched Clark for a moment as he added something to the pan that made it sizzle. _

"_So?"_

"_So he gets to cook," Lucy said, gesturing at the clarity of the point with the knife in her hand. _

_Clark left the room after finding a spatula for the grill, headed out to flip the burgers. Lucy and Lois continued to bicker in the kitchen. He could hear the twins giggling at their daddy upstairs. A car pulled into the driveway. _

_Unable to resist, Clark x-rayed through the house to get a look at the man he'd heard so much about. He was taller than Lois but shorter than Clark, maybe six feet, built on a wiry frame. He had a buzz cut though he'd been retired for almost fifteen years, his hair thick and white. He had a goatee with some silver left in it, a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once. His shoes were shiny, his khakis pressed, all the buttons on his shirt buttoned. Lois had gotten his chocolate brown eyes. _

_Ella Lane, on the other hand, didn't look nearly so intimidating. She wore a peach linen suit and an excited smirk, her face thin and not nearly as wrinkly as Lois had led him to believe. She had short permed hair that was steely gray, grayish blue eyes that were relaxed but looked as though a glare from them could cut steel. _

_They were an odd match, the way Clark often imagined himself and Lois to be. _

"_Clark! They're here!" Lucy called. Thunder on the stairs hailed the arrival of the twins to the first floor; Ron's steps followed slowly after, as though he were dreading the evening as much as Clark was. _

"_Momma," Lois said, welcoming her mother into Lucy's house with a warm hug. _

"_Lois," Ella said, smiling widely like Clark had never seen Lois smile. Clark thought back, realizing Lois had never mentioned the last time she'd seen her mother—she hadn't seen the General since she'd graduated from high school, she'd told him that much. Her mother, though; she had plenty of good stories about her mother. "How've you been, baby girl?"_

"_I'm great, Momma," Lois said, stepping back to let them into the house. "How're you?"_

_Mrs. Lane smiled. _

"_Nana!" The twins cried, arriving in the foyer at the same time and jumping on their grandmother. "General Grandpa!" They fell upon their grandfather when he entered behind Ella. Lois got out of the way to let her nieces swarm their grandparents. _

"_Hello, girls," the General said, less gruffly than he usually would, but still not as Clark would've expected a grandfather to greet his granddaughters. The girls still smiled widely, just glad to see him. _

"_Oh, Momma, this is Clark Kent, my partner at the _Planet_," Lois explained, pulling Clark from the doorway where he'd been watching the greetings. _

"_Oh, yes, I've heard a good deal about you, Mr. Kent," Ella said, eyes twinkling behind her square spectacles. "More from Perry than Lois, though, I'm afraid. Lois doesn't like to admit she needs a partner… Perry tells me you're the only one who can tolerate her spelling."_

"_Never did catch onto that… a miracle she got a career in journalism," the General huffed. Lois focused her eyes on Clark's shoulder so as not to make eye contact. _

"_Don't be rude, honey," Ella admonished, scowling at her husband. He just shrugged. _

"_He can't fight his nature," Lois said, still not making eye contact. _

"_Great. Good," Lucy said, stepping between her sister and father. "Let's have another Lois vs. Dad showdown. That's just what we need to start the evening off," she glared at the pair of them and Clark had to fight back a smile at how similar she looked to Lois when she glared. _

"_Sorry," Lois said a little sheepishly. The General took a breath but didn't say anything. _

"_I can't believe we're just meeting you now, Mr. Kent," Ella said as they moved into the house at large, the twins disappearing back up the stairs to their playroom. Lucy and Ron headed for the kitchen and back porch respectively. Lois and Clark followed Lucy to the kitchen and sat at the table with their coffee, quickly joined by the Lanes. _

"_Er, yeah," Clark said, not sure what to say. It wasn't like he was dating Lois or anything. They'd been working together for approaching a year, writing front page articles and spending almost every waking moment together to the point where most of the restaurants they frequented thought they were married. _

"_God, how did you get a job at the _Planet_ with a brain like that?" the General asked, noting Clark's oh-so-eloquent response. Clark's mouth snapped shut. Lois glared. _

_Somehow they managed to get through dinner without Lois and the General biting each others head off. This was managed simply by the long-standing habits of Lucy and Ella: Lois and the General were kept apart, seated at opposite ends of the table, Lucy kept conversation light in and away from 'problem topics,' and Ella honed her habit of stepping on her husband's foot whenever he was being overly disagreeable. Clark avoided talking to the General after that first encounter, speaking instead to Ron or Lois. _

_Just after dinner, the twins went mysteriously quiet upstairs in their playroom followed by a teary wail. Thunder on the stairs and then they were both in the kitchen, both in tears, Lola with a Barbie doll thoroughly entangled in her hair. _

"_Oh, what happened?" Lucy asked, kneeling down by her daughter and examining the doll attached to her daughter's head. _

"_Jenny—"_

"_Lola—"_

_They both started talking at once. Lola was stamping her foot and pointing at her sister, with angry eyebrows. Jennifer, on the other hand, was holding still so her mother could untangle the doll, but her face told all, red and puffy eyes, glaring at her sister and speaking as loudly as she could. _

_What Clark noticed in the commotion was that Ella and Lois and Ron rushed to see what was the matter; Ron scooping Lola up into his arms and talking her into settling down and speaking sensibly, Ella was trying to help Lucy get the doll out of Jennifer's hair, but getting in the way more than anything, Lois and Clark stood off to the side, closer to Ron and Lola, feeling out of place. The General, though, stayed at the table and stared at them all for a moment before fishing the sports section out of the pile of newspapers on the counter behind him and reading the headlines. _

Lois fell asleep with Clark's arms around her at the kitchen table. He held her for a moment after she'd fallen asleep, enjoying the feel of her in his arms. A buzzing static filled his ears that gave way to Bruce's voice repeating a message calling Clark to the rooftop where he was meeting with Gordon.

Rolling his eyes, the moment spoiled, Clark scooped Lois up into his arms and carried her up to the room she was sharing with Jason. The little boy was asleep in the middle of the mattress, curled in a tight ball beneath the fluffy comforter. Lois protested only lightly in her sleep when he took her robe off her shoulders and put her in bed next to their son. Jason rolled over when the blanket was pulled away but snuggled into Lois's side and fell back into the depths of sleep in no time.

Less than five minutes later, Clark was in the Suit flying over the city towards the police station. It was a remarkably clear night, the sky clear above, not many people out and about below. The infamous bat signal light was off; Bruce and Gordon were standing nearby next to a small table with folders from Bruce's cave spread across it, a largish lead box at the center of the table with a solid latch.

Clark dropped from the sky, landing without a sound behind Bruce. Gordon froze upon seeing the second superhero; he was used to the tall man in all black with the square chin and the gruff voice, the taller man with the spit curl in the bright uniform seemed a complete opposite, not to mention he was from a different planet.

"Uhm," Gordon said, eyes focused on Clark.

"Good evening, Lieutenant Gordon," Clark said amiably, turning to look at Bruce with a slightly less amiable look. "_Please_ turn off that infernal _dog whistle_."

Bruce did, flipping a switch on his belt to turn off the beacon, a smirk on his face. Clark nodded once to show his thanks before turning to look at what was spread out on the table.

"Er, good evening, Superman," Gordon finally made out. Clark smiled the trademark Superman smile before glancing at Bruce, whose posture was set, eyes focused on the lead box.

"I am assuming you found more kryptonite," Clark said, gesturing to the box. Gordon nodded nervously.

"Unfortunately, you are the most accurate test of its authenticity," Bruce said in the gravelly voice he used as Batman, stepping over to the table, cape swishing against the tops of his boots.

"Unfortunately," Clark nodded, stepping closer to the table as well. Gordon continued to stand quietly a few feet away from either of them.

Bruce opened the box and Clark flinched away from it at once before sucking it up and taking a step closer to look at what Bruce had found. There were two crystalline green lumps sitting on the bottom of the box, just sitting there. They glowed slightly in the darkness, dimming when Clark stepped away, glowing brighter when he came closer.

"Does it usually do that?"

"Glow?" Bruce gave him a 'No, ice skate' look; Clark nodded. Bruce raised a curious eyebrow that Clark only noticed because he, out of habit to be able to read Bruce's expressions better, constantly x-rayed through the cowl. "It reacts to the same enzyme in my blood that converts sunlight into energy… like chloroplasts, only different," Clark explained, flipping the lid closed and snapping the latch in place.

"A rock that can sense chloroplasts?"

"It's not chloroplasts. It's a common enzyme; everything on Krypton had at least a small amount of it."

"Telepathy?"

"No," Clark said, thinking for a moment before explaining; "If I were to meet someone or find something that was made on Krypton, I would know," he indicated the kryptonite with a hand, "even if it wasn't kryptonite."

Bruce nodded and turned back to their problem at hand. "These are two of three," he said, indicating the box and its contents. "I intercepted a man bringing them in from the docks. They were all in this box," Clark shifted, hiding a smirk as he imagined the altercation that had ensued that ended in the loss of only one of the chunks. Bruce ignored him. "I have a feeling this is only a sample of the overall shipment, though."

"And what gives you that idea?"

"They were each tagged with these," Gordon said a bit nervously, holding up evidence bags with tags in them. The tags weren't particularly memorable, simple labels with elastic bands big enough to surround the kryptonite looped through the holes in the ends of each. They were written on in plain black marker in all caps, 'KRYPTONITE 032,' and 'KRYPTONITE 003.' Clark took them from the lieutenant, examining them carefully.

"There are fingerprints on these—clear enough to be run through a computer," he said, handing them back to Gordon.

"It's more than likely your 'Boss' is in Gotham," Bruce said, looking at the files on the table before up at Clark again.

"It's more than likely our 'Boss' is Lex Luthor," Clark sighed.

"You know something," Bruce accused, hands in fists on the folders as he watched Clark think.

"I know lots of things," Clark replied, a corner of his mouth hitching up when he got a frustrated sigh out of his friend. "What are these folders about for?"

Knowing he wasn't going to get anything out of Clark, at least not in front of Gordon, Bruce began going over the folders of information on suspects and the kryptonite trail that could lead them either to the source or the Boss if they got enough information. They were on the rooftop 'til three in the morning, when Clark heard a call for help in Metropolis and remembered the rest of the world. He took his leave, tending what needed to be tended and flying his rounds.

- - -

Clark arrived in Smallville the next morning at nine after telling Lois his plane left at eight thirty and leaving in time to help out some Canadian tourists for an hour and a half.

"_There_ you are, Clark," Martha said when he came in the back door, glasses in the breast pocket of his plaid overshirt, jeans and work boots on as well.

"Am I late?" Clark asked, raising an eyebrow and following her voice into the kitchen.

"No, of course not. It's just that I think I've got everything sorted out for how this week is going to work; I just need you to move some furniture around."

"Alright," Clark said, cracking his knuckles and awaiting orders.

"Not right _now_, Clark. For Heaven's sake—you need breakfast," Martha rolled her eyes at him and took a plate laden with eggs and hash browns and bacon from the microwave, pushing toast down in the toaster.

"Mom, it's fine; I flew above the clouds all the way from the northeast edge of Canada."

"But a hearty breakfast will do you good," Martha insisted, giving him a look. "At the very least it will do no harm, now sit down."

"You make it sound like I can resist your cooking," Clark said, sitting down and tucking in. Martha gave him a satisfied look, buttering his toast before handing it over. As he ate, Martha explained her plan to him. Independence Day was only a few days away and, traditionally, all the Kents gathered at the Kent farm for a family reunion of sorts and fireworks. Clark had missed four years' worth of Fourth of July celebrations and his uncles had already called his mother to make sure he was going to make up for it—Martha had assured them he would and bought enough fireworks to keep the sky lit well into the night.

- - -

Jimmy walked into the _Daily Planet_ bullpen earlier than anyone else. He hadn't been able to sleep. Lois and Richard had disappeared from the hospital the day before and Clark hadn't been seen since lunchtime either, nor was Jason anywhere to be found; and the police weren't even looking for them. Walking into the bullpen and not finding that he'd been beat in by Clark was something that had only happened during Clark's recent sabbatical, which only made the absence eerier.

Jimmy walked to his desk, passing Lois and Clark's cubical area on his way. He paused a moment to have a look at the expensive opaque blue vase of white lilies on Clark's desk. Curiosity getting the better of him, Jimmy stepped into the cubical area and looked at the card; it read, _For Lois_.

Pondering it, Jimmy went to his own desk to begin the search for old pictures for the New Years' gala that would mark the 50th year of the _Daily Planet_'s existence. There was going to be a huge party which Perry was already stressing over. With the early hour, there really wasn't much else for Jimmy to work on, so he figured he'd get a head start for once.

Perry entered the bullpen twenty minutes later, listening to someone on his cell phone and nodding along. He snapped the phone shut angrily as he passed the Lane-Kent desk area, then turned and did a double-take at the flowers on Clark's desk.

"Olsen—do you have any idea what these are?" Perry snapped, too loudly, in Jimmy's opinion, for the empty room.

"Uh, lilies?" Perry gave him an impatient look. "I have no idea, Chief. They were here when I got here."

"Hm," Perry said, picking them up and carrying them toward his office.

"Uh, sir? Shouldn't you leave those there for, y'know, when Clark comes in?"

"He's not coming in today, he's… away," Perry said, getting a curious look from Jimmy and ignoring it.

Jimmy shrugged and went back to his photo archives, housing the vase of flowers in the back of his mind for later.

In his office, Perry looked over the vase and flowers, looking for a clue as to who they were from. It was an expensive arrangement; that was all he figured out before his writers began showing up and he was diverted by less confusing tasks.

- - -

"Okay, here's my plan," Martha said, taking out a sheet of notebook paper and showing it to Clark. "Jason will stay in your old room, that way he can be close to his parents in the guest bedroom in the southeast corner. Everybody else won't be here until tomorrow so we still have time to figure out if we need the couch out of that bedroom or not. We've got to get the two couches in the living room for you and Rick to sleep on tomorrow night—Rob and Anne will be in your downstairs bedroom because Rob has been having hip issues and can't do stairs very well these days. That leaves Dave and Celia in the second guest room upstairs… It's only a ten minute drive for Benji so he'll just leave and come back for breakfast."

"So what do you need me to do?"

"You need to get one of the couches from the guest bedrooms upstairs and put it in the living room and make sure your bedroom down here is Superman-free—and check the loft, too. Somebody's sure to end up there and the last thing we need is Benji walking down with a pair of bright red boots and asking questions."

"True," Clark said, smirking. She scowled at him, but he was off before it could have an effect, taking the couch out of the bedroom Lois and Richard wouldn't be staying in and shifting things around in the living room to fit the two long couches. A recliner ended up shoved in a corner without room to recline, but it would survive.

- - -

" The number? Er… 4-392-1294-5942-65," Perry said, holding the vase awkwardly up so that he could see the number printed on the bottom.

"Alright, you're in luck, Mr. Adams. We've only sold one of that particular item in the past week…hm," the girl on the other end of the line flipped through her pages of flower sales.

"Hm…?" Perry prompted.

"Well," she popped her gum, "it was actually sold to a Mr. Joeseph Svendahl out of Ruthe Correctional Facility."

"Joseph, you said?"

"Yeah… Didn't you say this package was sent to your wife? That's odd, y'know. Why would some guy in prison be sending her flowers?"

"Thank you for your time," Perry said, hanging up and setting the vase back down on his desk. He glanced over his desk, taking in what had to be done before the day was out and giving up on the idea of heading over to the prison and shoving the flowers down Joe's throat before lunch.

- - -

Lois yawned and sat up in the unfamiliar bed, taking stock of her surroundings in confusion. Everything looked expensive. The sheets were the softest she'd ever felt and the pillow was ridiculously fluffy. Jason was gone from her side though his spot was still warm.

Lois attempted to inhale deeply and ended up coughing. She dug through her suitcase and pulled out the make-up bag she'd put her new inhaler in and fished it out. She now understood the panic that was sometimes in Jason's eyes when he had an asthma attack. She didn't like not being able to breath.

After regaining her breath she found a clock and rushed out of her room, pulling her robe on as she went. She hardly remembered falling asleep, though she did remember that it had been on Clark's shoulder in the kitchen. It wasn't that thought that had her running for the kitchen again, though—it was the fact that the clock read 2p.

"Why didn't you wake me?" Lois asked, bursting into the kitchen to find Alfred and Jason finishing their grilled cheese sandwiches. Bruce was sitting on the stool opposite his butler, still in his pajamas, looking as though he'd had a late night and woken only a few minutes before her.

"Everybody slept in today," Jason said, shrugging and popping the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth. Lois quirked an eyebrow at him, glancing at the others.

"We are fairly used to late nights and later risings around here," Alfred said, piling his and Jason's dishes together. "You'll need it, going to the Kent farm."

"What do you mean, Mr. Alfred?" Jason asked, kicking his feet as his mother came to sit across from him, next to Bruce.

"People rise at ungodly hours on farms," Bruce grunted, making Jason giggle.

"I'm going back to bed," Lois said, standing up and almost making it to the door before Jason's voice called her back.

"Mommy," he sighed patiently, getting up and taking her hand to pull her back to her chair. "You can't go to bed now, Mr. Alfred made you breakfast!"

"Oh did he now?" She quirked an eyebrow at Alfred, who lifted the top off of a pan on the stove and scooped out a bowl's worth of hearty-looking oatmeal.

"There are raisons and cinnamon on the table," Alfred said. "And don't go telling Martha Kent I didn't feed you."

"I sense a rivalry," Lois said, spooning raisons into her bowl and stirring them in.

"You could say that," Alfred said with a small smile before leaving the kitchen. Jason followed him out. Lois looked to Bruce for more information.

"Years ago, hardly a year after Clark and I had met, he'd been back in the States for less than six months, Alfred and I paid him a visit in Smallville," Bruce explained. He had visited Clark with the idea of Batman forming, he and Alfred already setting things in motion. He'd wanted another opinion and he'd trusted Clark's. It had been that weekend that he had spent on the Kent farm that he'd come to know Clark better than most, particularly in the realm of planetary origin. Superman had saved Lois Lane for the first time a month and a half later, Batman emerging after another four months. "He and Martha bickered endlessly over recipes, traditions… down to which cooking shows are most worthy of viewing. It was ridiculous."

"Sounds like a good time," Lois commented, trying a spoonful of the oatmeal and finding it better than she'd expected. Bruce chuckled, nodding and having another bite of his breakfast. "So how long have you known Clark?"

"Years," Bruce shrugged. "He's my brother, really."

"Brother, huh?" Lois said, not sure if she believed him. Clark hardly mentioned Bruce Wayne, though she'd seen photos of them together. They'd always appeared close. "Does he know this?"

"Course," Bruce scraped the last of his breakfast from his bowl and set down his spoon with a satisfied sigh.

"So how did the pair of you become swordsman?" Lois asked, real curiosity driving the question more than her dislike of awkward silences; she figured that, now that she'd gotten him talking...

"That's kind of a complicated question," Bruce answered evasively, shifting in his seat. Lois became more interested. "It's turned out to be a good way to relieve stress, though."

"Clark doesn't get stressed," Lois chuckled. Bruce paused, looking at her a moment before speaking.

"You might be surprised, Miss Lane. Still waters run deep," with that, he gathered his dishes and put them in the sink before leaving the room.


	16. Chapter 16

"Hey, I'm gonna head to the airport and pick them up, okay?" Clark asked, grabbing the keys to the well-used pickup out of the little dish by the front door, turning back toward the house at large and glancing through the wall at his mother in the kitchen. She had been baking since she'd finished directing couch placement, eager to spoil her grandchild even if nobody could know she was his grandmother. He'd come back from a rescue in Saudi Arabia to find an apple pie steaming on the window sill, another one in the oven.

"Alright, I should have a fresh batch coming out when you get back," Martha called back with a smile over her shoulder at the wall, knowing her would see, referring to the batch of chocolate chip cookies she'd just put in the oven.

It was late—Bruce had called after putting Lois, Richard, and Jason on a dinner flight, which meant Lois wouldn't be able to sleep the whole way because she would be helping Jason with his dinner, which meant she would probably be in a foul mood when they landed. Clark had discovered that she disliked commercial flying as much as he did after experiencing the wonders of unaided flight with Superman. Or maybe it was just that she got comments about her flying experiences with Superman from all the ticket-people who saw her name on her ticket, and from any stewardess that recognized her, and then from a handful of other passengers.

It was an hour drive to Topeka Continental, a small airport for commercial flights on the outskirts of Topeka; the plane would be landing around seven, putting them back at the house shortly after eight. Jason would have enough time to have a few of the cookies his grandmother had made for him before he was rushed to bed.

"Where's Uncle Clark?" He heard Jason asking as they collected their baggage, each had a medium-sized duffel and that was it because of their hurried departure, Jason with his overlarge backpack full of paper and crayons and a few books, his new camera in his hands.

"I'm sure he's around here somewhere," Richard said, gingerly picking up his bag and settling it on his right shoulder as the other two took their bags, Jason having much less trouble with his than should be expected.

"I'll call him," Lois said, and Clark realized that his pocket was ringing.

"Hi," he said, putting the phone to his ear as he made his way through the airport towards the baggage claim.

"Where are you?" She asked, cutting right to the chase.

"Kansas, where are you?"

"Freaking Topeka Continental," Lois grumbled, scowling.

"Hey, enjoy the Kansas metropolitan while you can, Lois—you're headed to Smallville next."

"Just when I didn't think it could get any worse. How can you stand it?"

"Well, I _was_ raised here…" Clark pointed out.

"Exactly!" Clark snapped his phone shut, coming up behind the group of them. "Clark? He hung up on me! _Clark Kent_ hung up on me!"

"Only because I'm right here," Clark said, forcing himself not to roll his eyes. Lois spun around his surprise, glaring at him before her eyes went wide. He wasn't in his usual 'Clark Kent' attire, but sneakers and jeans with a flannel shirt unbuttoned with the sleeves rolled up over a plain white t-shirt. He was comfortable; he was in his 'home' clothes, which he just now realized that nobody from the office, not even Lois, had ever really seen.

"Hi, Uncle Clark!" Jason said holding up his camera and snapping a picture of Clark's surprised face, "I'm gonna take pictures of everything on your farm! Do you have cows?"

"Yep, and a goat."

"Cool!"

"A goat, Kent?" Lois asked incredulously, forcing herself to get over the beautiful forearms she could see with his sleeves rolled up and the well-defined abs the t-shirt was resting on.

"Yep, her name's Jemima," he shrugged.

"We're spending a week on a farm with a goat named Jemima," Lois said, turning to her fiancé and getting a commiserating look of horror.

Clark took Richard and Jason's bags, getting an understanding but annoyed look from Lois and ignoring it, leading the way out to the parking lot.

"You've got to be kidding me," Lois sighed when she saw the dusty pickup Clark was headed towards. The corner of his mouth hooked up for a brief second as he tossed the bag he was holding into the bed of the truck and unlocked the drivers side so that he could get at the automatic lock to unlock the other door.

"You should see the other one," he commented, still smirking.

"What is it, a tractor?"

"Well, we've got one of those, too, but the other one's an antique," he rolled his eyes. He couldn't deny that the other truck held some sentimental value, as it was the one his parents had been driving when they'd found him on the side of the road, it had been the first thing he had lifted with his unnatural strength… but it was practically falling apart, the rear tires were constantly deflating for no reason at all, and his mother had him spending half his time under the hood trying to fix the engine.

"I don't believe this," Lois sighed under her breath. Clark only continued to smile.

Richard and Jason squished into the back seat while Clark drove and Lois made herself comfortable on the passenger side, flicking through the radio stations complaining that there was nothing but country.

"Well, this _is_ the country, Lois," Clark pointed out, going slightly above the speed limit down the freeway.

"Shut up."

Jason was enamored with the view out his window: the sun was setting, painting the brilliantly green corn stalks in colorful light. Clark couldn't help but smile; it was one of his favorite views.

Jason was asleep when they pulled onto the long driveway to the Kent farm, Lois laughing merrily at the sight of the crooked tin mailbox.

"Hey, Munchkin, time to wake up—we're here," Lois said, rubbing her son's back gently over the back of her seat to wake him. Clark climbed out to get the bags to get away from the heartwarming scene, afraid Richard would notice. "C'mon, honey, I think I see the goat."

That got him up. "Jemima the goat?" He asked, perking up and pushing at her seat, trying to get her to fold it down and let him out.

"That's the one," she sighed, climbing out and helping him out. Jason rushed across the yard, camera in had; he didn't touch the goat, but he took a picture as close as he dared get, the flash surprising the goat into wide-eyed stillness and making Jason giggle. The chickens came around from the other side of the house to see what all the commotion was about, making Jason laugh harder.

"Look, Mom! Chickens!"

Clark whistled lightly and Shelby trotted out the doggy door, ears on alert, looking curiously up at her master. "Shelby, chickens," he said, indicating the chickens.

Lois could've sworn the dog _smiled_. Giving a loud bark, Shelby tore off after the chickens with energy belying her age. The chickens scattered and the dog amused herself rounding them into the coup while the humans gathered the bags from the truck and dragged Jason away from the goat.

"Wow, that is an antique," Richard chuckled, seeing the truck sitting back next to the chicken coup when he peaked around the side of the house. One of the back tires had deflated again, making it comically lopsided. Clark chuckled and nodded, holding the door open the three of them to enter followed by Shelby, who was still looking rather proud of herself.

"Ma?" Clark called into the house; he could smell the cookies, but he had to pretend like he couldn't see her about to take the last tray out of the oven through the walls.

"Kitchen," she called back followed by the slam of the oven door closing abruptly and the renewal of the freshly baked cookies aroma.

"C'mon, I'll get you situated then you can meet her," he said, taking the bags and leading them up the stairs.

"Ma's room," he pointed to the first door on the right, turning left away from Martha's room at the landing and following the hall around to the left; "Jason's room," he opened the door to his old bedroom and set Jason's bag on the foot of the bed.

"Was this your old room?" Jason asked, looking around at the cowboy wallpaper border, the Star Wars action figures from the eighties lined up atop the dresser, and the photos on the shelves and bedside table.

"Yep," Clark said, looking over the room again. He hadn't spent much time in his old bedroom since his dad had died. He'd moved downstairs because things had been too familiar upstairs, he had woken up too many mornings to poke his head into his father's room to collect him for morning chores only to realize it was just Martha in the bed. Being downstairs had stopped him from making that mistake and often waking Martha in the process. The downstairs room had also come in handy in later years when Clark was in and out all night. It had been the upstairs bedroom, though, that Martha had hauled him up to after he'd crash-landed upon his return from Krypton.

"Who's this?" Jason asked, picking up a photo off of Clark's night stand. It was a picture of Clark and Jessica hardly a week before she'd died—the middle of summer, sun shining merrily on the pair of them, each with a horse behind them, reins in hand. They were both in plaid, sun glinting off Clark's glasses, both smiling widely.

"That's me and my little sister Jess, Jessica," Clark said, taking the picture and looking at it sadly before putting it back in its spot next to the lamp.

"I didn't know you have a sister," Jason's eyes sparkled with interest, reminding Clark of the almost identical instance on the roof of the _Daily Planet_ that he had ended up telling Lois the story of his sister's death.

_FLASHBACK_

_Clark looked out over Metropolis, taking in the cityscape in the falling snow. It had been a gray day, the snow holding off until just before sunset. The sky was purple beyond the gray clouds, beautiful. _

_Clark could hear the party raging in the bullpen below. The _Daily Planet_'s annual Christmas party, held the week before Christmas, was in full swing. It was nearing midnight and most of the staff had already drunk too much eggnog. Clark had retreated to the roof to be away from his drunk coworkers, unable to take Jimmy's giggling much longer. _

_Steady footsteps on the stairs to the roof startled him out of his melancholy. Lois was making her way up to the roof in her stocking feet, her heels in one hand, two cups of spiked eggnog in the other. She opened the door too soon for Clark to disappear so as to reappear in his primary colored Suit. Instead, he turned to look over his shoulder at her, watching her put her shoes back on before leaving the shelter of the landing to bring him the second glass of eggnog._

"_Thought I'd find you up here," she said, joining him leaning against the ledge and looking out over the city. "It's beautiful like this."_

"_Yes," Clark agreed, sipping the drink, surprised she'd brought it for him and not Superman._

"_So, what are you escaping—the holiday merriment or the holiday drunks?"_

"_Both," Clark chuckled, lapsing into silence again. _

"_There's not enough eggnog in this rum," Lois said, setting her glass to the side and glancing at Clark when he chuckled. "So what really drove you to the solitude of the roof?"_

"_Too much holiday spirit," Clark said, getting a look from Lois. He smiled before sobering, setting his glass aside as well. "This was my sister's favorite time of year. It's still a rough season."_

"_I didn't know you had a sister," Lois said, turning a little to examine his profile as he stared out at the city almost absentmindedly. _

"_She died," Clark said simply, "a long time ago."_

"_I'm sorry," Lois said, turning back to look out at the city as well. Clark immediately regretted snapping at her, his learned disposition towards keeping his cards close to his chest for once unneeded. _

"_She wasn't my biological sister," he found himself saying, Lois listening intently but quietly, not wanting to break whatever spell that had come over Clark to make him speak about anything remotely personal. "Well. She was my parents' daughter… My parents found me on the side of the road when I was three."_

"_Clark!" Lois breathed, reaching out to take his shoulder. He glanced at her at the touch but continued on as though she hadn't said anything. _

"_I don't really know the circumstance that led to my being on the side of the road next to a cornfield in the middle-of-nowhere, Kansas, but… I'm kind of glad that's where I ended up," he glanced at Lois, a small smile on his lips, then turned back to the city to continue. "Anyway, my parents had been trying to adopt for years, all the doctors had told them to quit trying. Two years after they found me, though, Jess was born, Jessica…" he sighed and was quiet for a moment. "You would've liked her."_

"_What happened to her?" _

"_We had gone into town, I forget why… There was a tornado," he took a drink of his eggnog before continuing. They'd gone into town to see a movie because it had been a slaughter day on the Kent farm and he couldn't stand to hear the executions. "We were headed back to the farm and the truck was sucked up into it. The front was taken out by a tractor tire and we were both sucked out of the cab. We landed in the ditch on these… sharp rocks," he frowned, thinking of the sharp shards of kryptonite they'd landed on—his first encounter with the stuff. "I was hardly hurt, just had the wind knocked out of me and a few cuts and bruises. Jess, though," he shook his head. "She was broken, bleeding internally… I held her hand while she died in the field."_

"_Oh, Clark," Lois said, wrapping her arms around him and holding tight. Clark froze for a second, completely taken off guard by the compassion she was showing, it was the last thing he had been expecting, then he returned the gesture reflexively. "That's awful."_

"_That's life."_

_Lois squeezed him a little tighter, thinking of his happy-go-lucky attitude and constant grin and wondering how he managed. _

"She died," Clark said simply, but he couldn't leave Jason with that—she would've been his aunt. "There was a tornado, a long time ago."

He made brief eye contact with Lois before turning and leading them back into the hall and to the right towards the first guest bedroom.

"Touchy subject," Lois explained, stepping around Richard to follow Clark to the next room.

Clark opened the door and set Richard's bag on the couch, giving a slightly tour-guide-ish smile. "Guest bedroom," Clark said, indicating the room. It was somewhat spacious with a queen size bed and a full-length couch in addition to the free standing wardrobe. "We can move this couch out of here if you like," he offered, half hoping they'd accept, half praying they were still drifting apart. "There's room for it—"

"No, it's fine," Richard said almost too quickly. Lois frowned. "It's the perfect place to the bags," he shrugged with his good arm, taking Lois's bag from her and putting it on the couch next to his.

"Well, if you change your mind…" was all Clark could come up with. Richard shook his head.

"Where are you sleeping, then, if Jason's in your old room?" Lois asked, looking around the room she'd be sharing with Richard.

"There's a second bedroom downstairs off the living room," he replied, thumbing toward the stairs. "It's more convenient that way—when I'm home I'm usually out until late."

"You a big man on the Smallville party scene?" Lois teased. Clark raised an eyebrow.

"No, actually, there's a definite lack of a 'party scene' in Smallville," he chuckled, setting Jason's bag on the bed and turning to go back out into the hall. "There's always stuff to do out in the fields or in the barn. Keeps me busy."

"Right," Lois replied, obviously trying hard not to laugh. Clark rolled his eyes and led the way back downstairs.

"There you are," Martha said when they all entered the kitchen, her eyes lingering for a second too long on Jason before she turned back to her cookies. Clark was sure she'd baked them at least four dozen cookies in the past few hours, and then there were the two pies she'd baked early in the day. "I'd wondered where you'd all got to—" she smiled at them all again. "Hi, I'm Martha Kent."

"Hello Mrs. Kent, thank you so much for letting us stay here," Lois said, smiling politely.

"Mom, Lois Lane, her fiancé Richard White, and their son Jason," Clark introduced. Richard nodded his acknowledgement and Jason smiled toothily, eying the cookies on the table behind his grandmother.

"Hi," he said.

"Hello there, young man. You look like you could use a cookie."

"Yes please!"

- - -

Perry was sitting at the vistor's station waiting for Joe an hour after the evening issue of the _Planet_ went to print. He'd waited fifteen minutes when, finally, Joe was led out in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs, looking surly.

"Well, you were the last person I'd expect to be visiting me on the inside," Joe said in the most condescending way manageable by a man wearing an orange jumpsuit on the wrong side of the glass.

"You're the last person I'd expect to be sending Lois Lane flowers the morning after Superman pulled her out of a burning bunker," Perry said, glaring through the glass.

"What? I didn't send Lois Lane flowers. I ordered Clark Kent flowers, just like old times…" Joe said, looking a little panicked that his gesture had been misinterpreted.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Kent always used to know where she was, I figured he could deliver my get well soon gift," he said with a dark smirk on his face.

Perry hung up the phone and walked away. He'd left the lilies in the back seat of his car.

They'd exploded by the time he got there.

In Smallville, Clark's head twitched to the side ever so slightly. In the beginning, when he'd first started listening to the world at large for trauma he could fix, the twitch had been an obvious jerk of his head toward the crisis. As it was, Lois and Martha were the ones to notice

"Did I tell you that Mr. Warner called this evening while you were out?" Martha asked, retaking her seat in her rocking chair next to the couch with the steaming cup of tea she'd gotten up to get.

"No, what did he say?" Clark asked, thankful to, for once, have somebody around to cover for him.

"He wanted to know if you could stop by tonight and take a look at his tractor—he said it was 'making that noise again,' whatever that means."

"Last time he said that he'd shut his dog in the cab," Clark said, rolling his eyes. Lois burst out into laughter that quickly disintegrated into coughing, eyes watering, Clark's twitch completely forgotten.

"Will you guys be okay for a few hours?" Clark asked after Lois had gotten her breath back, glancing at the inhaler in Lois's hand, the puffed bandaging on Richard's shoulder, and his mother sitting with her tea.

"Of course," Lois said, relaxing back into the thick cushions of the couch. Richard and Martha nodded their agreement, so Clark shrugged nonchalantly, hankering to get to New York and the explosion he'd just heard.

"Alright, then," Clark shrugged. "I guess I'll go pay Mr. Warner a visit."

He left the living room, impatience bubbling deep in his chest cavity, attention focused on the parking lot. Perry was standing a few feet from the wreckage, his mouth running away with him to the point of driving the rest of the people in the parking lot to silence.

Clark put his jacket and boots on as quickly as possible, grabbing the keys to the truck and practically jogging out of the house.

Superman arrived nearly ten minutes after the lilies on the back seat of Perry's car exploded. He quickly scanned the scene before setting down next to Perry, who was, by now, red in the face from complaining about the lack of security in the flower distribution industry. He was on the phone with a manager at the flower shop that Joe had phoned in his order to and the poor man was near tears with threats of ruthless front page articles and promises of the small business' demise.

"Mr. White," Clark said, his voice not loud, but his timbre just right to capture the editor's attention.

"Superman," Perry said, freezing for a moment, the person on the end of the line taking a hopeful breath. "I'll call you back," he assured the manager, though it was more like a threat than anything else.

"Superman," the warden said, his eyes wide; Superman didn't usually spend much time visiting prisons. "What—"

"Superman," Perry interrupted, focusing on Clark and ignoring the look the warden gave him at the interruption. Clark was too used to Perry's aggressive style to notice the ruffled feathers. "It was a pot of lilies."

"A pot of lilies?" Clark repeated, not understanding.

"Yes, the explosive. It must've been hidden in the flower arrangement I had in the back seat. An expensive vase of lilies," Clark raised an eyebrow. "They were on Clark Kent's desk this morning. 'For Lois' on the tag."

"Just like old times," Clark muttered under his breath, his face momentarily giving away his worry. Perry didn't say anything. "And they were from…?" he prompted.

"Joe," Perry answered quickly. "Joseph Svendahl. One of Lane and Kent's informants. He was the one who shot Richard, my nephew," Clark nodded to show that he knew, or at least understood what the editor was talking about, "a week ago… He said he sent them, 'just like old times…'"

Clark frowned, glancing through the prison walls to see Joe in his cell, staring at the wall across from his bunk with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

He was distracted before he could inquire further by the hauntingly unmistakable sound of a tornado touching down. What was usually a slight twitch became a full-out jerk of his head.

"Superman?" Perry asked, eyebrows raised.

"I'm sorry, I have to go," he said, hardly listening to the chatter of the officers around him.

"Wha—?"

Clark took off; rising slowly at first but more rapidly after he'd cleared the tops of the nearest buildings. The sonic boom echoed overhead as he disappeared into the distance.

"Well that was the least helpful he's ever been," Perry observed, adding 'especially where Lois Lane is concerned' to himself.

"Must've been something bigger somewhere," the warden guessed.

Halfway across the nation, in Wisconsin of all places, two tornadoes had touched down within five miles of each other.

Clark had plenty of experience with tornadoes, growing up in Tornado Alley, but he was never comfortable approaching them. They were amazing displays of strength by nature. The same went for hurricanes and other natural disasters. Natural disasters were a nice distraction from man-made, and usually more malicious, disasters, though certainly not easier to deal with.

The twisters had touched down in the southwest corner of the state, one wreaking havoc on an empty stretch of highway, the other doing a little more damage. He left the first alone, keeping an ear on it while he chased down the other. There was a small town made up of gas stations and a car dealership on one side of the highway, a small mall and neighborhood on the other.

The car dealership was the biggest problem, as the tornado seemed drawn to it. Trucks were flying through the air, spinning in the vortex, flying out at all angles and crashing to the ground or whatever they happened to encounter first.

Wind and rain whipped around him, making flight more complicated than it usually was. He could hear people shouting to each other below but couldn't see them without x-raying through layers of rain and wind. In the chaos, he heard the screams of four teenage girls in a compact car as it was picked up off the road and spun around before hurtling out of the tornado towards a house. Clark swooped down and plucked the car out of the air, metal crunching in his hands as he fought the wind for a grip on the car.

The girls stopped screaming, immediately asking questions of each other. He was beneath the car, out of their view. He flew them out of range of the winds before setting the car down in the ditch and stepping around to the driver's window. "Stay in there 'til it's over," he instructed, getting dumbfounded nods from the girls inside.

Over the course of the next half an hour, he added two more cars and four trucks to the ditch where he'd left the first car. None of the additional cars, though, had people in them, and they all were, or had been at the beginning of the tornado, ridiculously shiny.

At the end, half the cars in the dealership parking lot were strewn about the town. Clark had only grabbed the vehicles that had been on course to crash into homes.

"Are you all alright?" Clark said after lifting the teenagers' car out of the ditch and setting it back on the road. The four of them were out of the car quickly, staring at him and the town.

"We're… fine," the driver said, glancing at her friends, who were nodding.

"If we say no… will you fly us somewhere again?" One of them asked, batting her eyelashes. Clark raised an eyebrow, the friends swatted at her.

"Ignore her, she's an idiot," the driver said. Clark smiled, glancing over the town at large before taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly.

He spent another ten minutes in the town, listening for any cries for help and flying one woman who'd gotten caught outside in the storm and taken a tree in the gut, breaking three ribs, while Clark was keeping a car from going through the front window of a family who were sitting on their couch watching the wind.

After things were finished in town, he flew to Oslo to sort out a twelve car pile-up, then stopped a train from derailing in Japan, put out a campfire that was literally a camp in flames, the campers nowhere in sight. He made his way back to Metropolis, flying over and peering down the dark alleyways, into the unused warehouses, and have a look at the other suspect places as he made his way to the _Daily Planet_, where Perry was pacing the roof, a huge cigar between his fingers. His lips were moving silently, as though he were rehearsing a speech he was nervous about. _Since when has Perry been worried about giving a speech?_

"You shouldn't smoke, you know," Clark said in his deepest Superman voice before landing soundlessly on the ledge behind his boss. Perry turned to look at the Man of Steel, hand frozen halfway to his mouth, cigar smoldering between his fingers.

"Well, uh… old dog, you know?" Perry said, shrugging. Clark nodded, floating down to Perry's eye level.

"I don't think I've ever met you up here before."

"Actually," he said, shifting uncomfortably and having a quick puff at his cigar. "I was kind of hoping to have a word, if you don't mind."

Clark raised a polite eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest and preparing to listen.

"I'd like you to keep an eye on a pair of my reporters for me," Perry said quietly, almost sounding, to Clark's surprise, humble. "I know this is kind of unusual, but there've been death threats after Lois and Clark for the past few weeks and they've really gotten serious—they're hiding out in Smallville, Kansas now, but…" he shook his head. "They've always gone for the big fish, I swear every white hair on my head is from those two," he chuckled, "imagine if I'd had kids."

Clark could only smile, not sure what he should be saying—his editor was comparing him and Lois to his children and asking for their special protection. He was touched.

"Their source, Joe, sent a bomb in a flower pot this morning," Perry said, continuing to make his case. "Imagine if they'd left a day later than they did. Kent would've been in this morning, first as usual—then nobody would've asked questions. One or both of them could've died… _Then_ who would write me front page articles?"

Clark chuckled.

"So will you do it, then? Keep an eye on them?" Perry snubbed the cigar out on the ledge and, almost reluctantly, turned to look him in the eye.

"Yes," Clark said with a quick nod before tilting his head curiously to one side. "Have the police figured out what happened, exactly?"

"The delivery guy didn't actually work for the flower shop but it was so early when the order was sent out that the clerk didn't notice. He put the homemade bomb in the vase, delivered it here," Perry shrugged. "The only thing that went wrong was that Lois and Clark weren't working today."

- - -

Clark returned to Smallville after flying over Metropolis again. The night was no different than any other night so far, though; there were no signs of the missing children or their captors. He traced the most common routes to Gotham, not seeing any U-Hauls or panel vans or anything lead-lined on wheels that would raise suspicion. As disheartened as ever, hoping the police were having more luck with what little they had found in the ash at the bunker than he was on his end.

Clark changed back into his street clothes and pulled the truck keys out of his pocket. He'd stashed in less than a mile from the farm, just out of sight of the road. He had two minutes' drive before he was back at the farmhouse, all windows dark. It was quiet inside, all breathing upstairs slow and steady. All but one—Jason. "Hey, Dad," Jason said from the couch where he was wrapped up in one of his grandmother's hand-knit quilts when Clark walked in.

"Hey, Jason; shouldn't you be sound asleep?"

"Prolly, but I wanted to stay up and wait for you to get back."

"That was nice of you," Clark chuckled. For the second time that night he was touched—he'd never had anybody waiting up for him before. He and Lois hadn't been _together_ long enough for that sort of thing, and Martha had stopped allowing herself to dwell on everything that could go wrong years ago.

"Did anything fun happen, or was it all serious?" Jason asked, folding up into a ball and resting his chin on his knees as he looked up at his father. Clark joined him on the couch, slipping off his work boots to put his feet on the coffee table.

"It was a quiet night," Clark shrugged—the last thing Jason needed to hear about was another failed attempt on his mother's life. He relaxed into the couch of his childhood and looking around the room. It hadn't changed much over the years, a few new photographs, a few replaced items of furniture.

"Watcha lookin' for?" Jason asked, seeing Clark's distant look around the room.

"Nothing," he shrugged. "Just remembering what it was like when I was your age."

"What was it like?"

"We had red striped wallpaper then."

"I like the yellow."

"Me too, but don't tell Ma," he winked. The creamy yellow paint that had replaced the wallpaper had been Jonathan's idea, the last one they had brought to fruition as father and son—Martha had steadfastly resisted the project, but the men had won out. Jason smiled, liking to be in his father's confidence.

"What else?"

"Well, this coffee table is new," Clark chuckled, taking his feet off the table to pat it affectionately with his hand. The pat brought Shelby out of her nook in the kitchen, grunting her greeting and hopping up onto the couch between the pair of them, her head finding a spot on Clark's thigh, her tail wagging in Jason's lap. "Well hi, Shelby, good to see you too."

Jason giggled. "Why did Gramma get a new coffee table?"

"I might've set it on fire," Clark admitted, and he could've sworn Shelby was laughing at him, he tousled her ears and smiled at Jason's interested look. "I was a senior in high school and I got really, really angry and lost control of my heat vision," he admitted. Jason seemed torn between the humor of the situation and the seriousness—he'd already showed signs of developing Kryptonian tendencies and was looking forward to more, but he was a smart little boy, he realized it wouldn't all be flying around in the sunshine.

"What did you do?"

"I closed my eyes as soon as I realized what was happening and my dad put out the fire. Ma and Dad went into town that night and got a new coffee table and I spent the weekend in my room thinking about Antarctica."

"Were they mad at you?"

"They weren't happy about it, but," he shrugged, "Ma always said she'd hated that old coffee table."

"What's it like when you use heat vision? Can you still see?"

"Yep, everything is just tinted red around the edges," he explained. "When it first started happening, my eyes would be really dry and itchy before and after it happened, and I didn't have much control over it. It took time."

"Like it'll take time for me to be able to do more stuff?"

"Yep."

They sat for a few minutes in silence, Clark absentmindedly stroking Shelby and thinking now of the future and of Jason. Jason was tired, watching Shelby's tail move back and forth hypnotically. "We should get you to bed, son," Clark said, snapping himself out of his thoughts when Jason yawned widely.

"No," Jason protested, "I wanna stay up with you."

"I'm going to sleep too, though."

"Do you get tired?"

"Yep, just like you do," he said, noting the drooping eyes and how deeply the boy had sunk into the couch. Jason smiled a little, his eyelids taking longer than usual to open a gain the next time he blinked. "Let's go upstairs, eh? What do you say to letting Shelby guard the end of your bed?"

"Yeah!" Jason's smile widened.

"C'mon, then" Clark scooped the boy up and carried him upstairs. By the time they reached the top landing, Jason was practically asleep on Clark's shoulder. Shelby padded softly along behind, brushing against Clark's knee and sitting patiently next to the foot of the bed. "Goodnight—I'll introduce you to the horses in the morning, okay?"

"There're horses?" He looked like he couldn't quite be as happy as he wanted to be because he was too tired.

"Yep, four of them."

"Cool."

"Yes, they are."

"What time can I get up in the morning?"

"What do you mean?"

"At home, Mom says I can't get out of bed until the little hand points at the six."

"Around here people get up with the sun."

"Really?" Clark had never heard a city kid so excited to be allowed to get up before six.

"Sure. If Ma or I aren't puttering around downstairs, c'mon into my room and jump on me and I'll start your breakfast."

"M'kay. Night, Dad."

"G'nite, Jason," Clark smiled, tucking the boy in and patting the bed to get Shelby up onto it. Jason smiled sleepily down at the dog at the foot of his bed and was asleep before Clark had left the room.

Clark closed the door silently behind him and x-rayed through the walls as he walked down the hall to the stairs. Martha was sound asleep, sprawled across the center of the bed as only a person completely relaxed could. Clark knew she only slept like that when he was in the house. Lois and Richard were both out like lights, too—Richard on the couch. Sighing, Clark continued on his way down and changed into his pajamas and fell into bed.


	17. Chapter 17

The next morning dawned even earlier than usual on the farm when a chipper six-year-old collided with Clark's ribcage at four in the morning.

"Wake up, Dad! You said I could be up when the sun was up!"

"The sun isn't even up, yet," Clark groaned; he had a unique sense for just when the sun rose as he got his power from the sun. He sat up anyways to find Jason frowning at him.

"It's light outside."

"Alright, c'mon—find your shoes and we'll go watch the sunrise."

"M'kay!" Jason ran out of the room and was back so fast that Clark swore he had used super-speed. The boy tied his shoes, smiling up at Clark when he did it without a problem, and stood ready. Clark sat on the edge of the bed and blinked.

"There is no way you are my son. You are too awake before sunrise."

"Sure I am," Jason frowned at him. Clark smiled, ruffling his hair and stumbling out of the bedroom in search of his shoes. Jason was eager to get going, taking the jacket Clark gave him and stuffing his arms in the sleeves, hanging on the doorknob while Clark laced up his boots and grabbed his own jacket.

"Alright, _now_ we can go," Clark said, chuckling as Jason threw the door open and ran out onto the porch. Clark stopped the door from banging against the wall and closed it behind them before guiding Jason out to the fence on the far side of the barn, Shelby trailing along after them in a dog's distracted manner. The sun was rising over the corn, painting the sky pale pink and orange, the corn seeming to be brighter green than it had the day before.

"It's really pretty," Jason said, his smile wide as he sat on the top rung of the fence and looked out at the field.

"Beautiful," Clark replied, nodding.

They stood there for the better part of an hour, watching the sun rise over the cornfield. Clark had imagined this when he was much younger, he figured it was just another thing that set him apart from the human race. Teenage girls were supposed to have planned and re-planned their weddings five times over by the time they actually got married, while teenage boys were known for only thinking of acts that could lead to children but not much after that. Clark, on the other hand, had wanted a child, somebody that was part of him, ever since his parents had explained point-blank that he was an alien. He'd never expressed this desire to anyone, fearing judgment and the inevitable pitying look when they realized how unlikely it was. And now he had it. Sure, he hadn't pictured a ball of energy at four in the morning to jump on his ribs (and it had actually kind of hurt, which was interesting) but that same ball of energy was now more mellowed and enjoying something he'd wanted to share since those troubled teen years.

"Da-ad?" Jason sang, staring at Clark and waving a hand in front of his face.

"What? Sorry."

"Its okay, what's for breakfast?" He was off the fence, then, and headed back towards the house with an energized hitch in his step.

"What do you want for breakfast?" Clark responded, pushing away from the fence to follow Jason into the house.

"Food," Jason said, shrugging and running the rest of the way into the house.

Clark chuckled to himself and walked into the kitchen, looking through the pantry for ideas. Jason had found the remote—a feat that usually required x-ray vision—and turned on morning cartoons. Chuckling again, Clark got started on blueberry pancakes

Martha was the next up, at six, finding her son and grandson sitting at the kitchen table on their second platefuls of pancakes, still in their pajamas. She was touched the way Clark had been earlier, especially when Jason called her Gramma.

When Lois and Richard rose, a little after eight, Clark, Jason, and Martha were all dressed and moving about. Jason had a bag of feed and was tossing handfuls out for the chickens, giggling as they massed on the stuff. Clark was in the barn mucking out the stalls, the horses grazing in the paddock at their leisure. He felt like he looked like his father—he was wearing worn-out leather work gloves, his plaid flannel shirt buttoned halfway over his plain t-shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his jeans were splattered in farm muck, his work boots equally splattered as he worked and kept an ear out for Jason.

"Good morning, Lois," Martha said, making Clark pause in his work to glance through the walls and see a disoriented Lois with bad bed head, still in her robe, standing in the doorway to the kitchen searching for the coffee pot.

"Uh, morning," Lois managed. Chuckling, Martha pressed a cup of coffee into Lois's hand and handed another to Richard as he walked in.

"Thanks you," Richard said, looking much more awake than his fiancé.

"There are blueberry pancakes in the oven keeping warm, and the syrup is still on the table."

"Where's Jason?" Again, it was Richard who managed the important questions.

"He's feeding the chickens."

"Really? He usually sleeps in when he doesn't have school."

"Hm," Martha frowned, but wanted to smile. "The farm must've gotten to him, then," she smiled indulgently, grabbing her purse and the truck keys. "Clark said he poked his head into his room at four o'clock this morning and they watched the sunrise… I have to run into town quick, I'll be back before you know it—enjoy breakfast, if you need anything Clark's in the barn."

"Thanks," Lois said, but Martha wasn't sure if she was just now getting around to responding to the coffee or if she was up to date on the conversation.

Lois sat down at the kitchen table and slowly drank her coffee, while Richard loaded a plate with eggs and bacon from the covered pans on the stovetop. Lois helped herself to a few pieces of bacon to go along with her coffee after her first cup of coffee. The pair of them at in silence, listening to Jason giggling in the yard as he fed the chickens and the radio playing jazz in the corner.

Lois finished first and hurried up to the bedroom they were sharing, unable to remember a time when they hadn't had anything to say to each other. They weren't even arguing anymore.

She dressed in a hurry after a brief fight with her suitcase to get her capris out without pulling the rest of her clothes out with them. Finally dressed in the jean capris and a blue tank top, she went downstairs, noticing that Richard was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Again, they didn't speak a word to each other when they passed, Lois heading outside towards the chicken coup while Richard took his turn in the room.

"G'morning," Lois said, joining Jason in the yard as he threw the last handful of feed onto the ground.

"Morning, Mom!" Jason said, smiling widely and holding up the empty bag. "I fed the chickens."

"They sure seem to appreciate it, too," Lois chuckled, her son continuing to smile.

"I'm gonna go see what else Unca Clark will let me do," he jogged off toward the barn, stopping before he entered to call back to his mother; "C'mon, Mom—you can meet the horses!"

"The horses, huh?" Lois said, following after him at a slower pace.

"Ah-ah-ah!" She heard Clark warn in the barn, making her smile as she entered. "You stand by that bin and they'll all swarm you."

"Why?" Jason asked, peeking into the bin and finding it full of carrots. "Carrots?"

"They love them," Clark said, striding over, pulling a glove off to take one out of the bin. He walked over to the gate keeping the horses outside the barn and held the carrot out; immediately three of the four horses were at the gate, competing for the best position. "Why don't you grab a few more?"

"Okay," Jason said, sounding a little nervous but still hurrying to the gate.

"C'mon over, Lois," Clark said, taking the extra carrots from Jason and holding one out to Lois. She approached as tentatively as her son, needing a little coaching to get her to stand by the gate and hold the carrot close enough for one of the horses to get it.

Clark stood to the side, watching Lois and Jason with the horses. It was a Kodak moment if there ever was one. The moment was ruined by the buzz of the television turning on in the house—Richard was lounging on the couch, giving his shoulder a careful touch and wincing, watching the news.

- - -

Clark and Jason walked into the hardware store, Jason clutching his camera in one hand, a short list on a post-it in the other.

"What do we need to pick up, again?" Clark asked, grabbing a basket. It was surreal to be back in Smallville, stopping at the hardware store that his dad used to take him to. And with Jason, no less.

"Uh," Jason said, examining the list. He was just learning how to read, doing amazingly well, but even the simplest words tended to give him trouble. "Red… spray paint…lighter… two… inch… nails… fireworks!"

"Alright—the paint's way in the back," Clark said, pointing down the center aisle to the paint department. "Let's start with that."

They picked out the paint they needed, got the nails (the railing to the loft lounge-area needed to be replaced), and a campfire lighter (Martha hardly had use for one and the one she'd had had been out of juice), before stopping in front of the end-cap loaded with fireworks.

"What kind can we get?" Jason asked, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet with excitement.

"Well," Clark looked over the selection. Martha had spent the year accumulating the big fireworks and her particular favorites—Clark and Jason had gone out to get poppers and sparklers, kid friendly fire, for Jason to entertain himself with. "What do you want… keeping in mind that your mother will be looking over our shoulders when we're setting them off."

Jason giggled. "Can I get the sparklers?" He pointed to the box on the topmost shelf, long, colorful sparklers.

"Sure," Clark retrieved the sparklers and put them in their basket. "Anything else, you think?"

"No," he frowned, looking over the display again. Clark raised an eyebrow. Jason smiled up at him, a mischievous glint in his eye that reminded Clark of Lois. "I saw the big ol' case of fireworks in the barn."

"And all you want is sparklers?" Clark raised an eyebrow. Jason shrugged.

"There's lots of them."

"I'm trying to spoil you here, Jason," Clark said, narrowing his eyebrows and giving his son a crooked grin, making Jason giggle.

"Nana says it's impossible to spoil me."

"Oh, does she, now?" Clark scrutinized the shelf, making Jason giggle again.

"C'mon, Uncle Clark," Jason said, tugging at his dad's hand—Clark had advised him to stick to the 'uncle' title when they were in public, just in case. "Just make Mom let me play with the sparklers all by myself."

"Deal," Clark said, chuckling. They turned to walk toward the register and almost knocked a familiar face over.

"Whoa—" Lana said, grabbing the nearest shelf to keep herself from falling over. Clark took a quick step back, blinking at the woman in front of him.

"Sorry, sorry," Clark said, then stopping; "Lana?"

"Clark? Hi!"

"Hi."

"When did you get in town? What're you doing here? It's so great to see you!" Lana said, quickly recovering and threw her arms around him in a quick hug.

"Hi," Clark said again when she'd let him go and she laughed. Her laugh wasn't as intoxicating as he remembered it being. Actually, it wasn't really intoxicating at all—just another laugh.

"God, I haven't seen you in _forever_! Where've you been?"

"Gee, Lana, which question am I supposed to answer first?" He chuckled. "I'm living in Metropolis, these days. I work at the _Daily Planet_."

"Oh! I remember seeing that you'd written an article. Are you liking it there?"

"I love it there."

"… so what are you doing here…?" She asked, leading him back to her original question.

"Visiting," Clark said enigmatically. Lana raised an eyebrow. "My partner from the_Planet_, her fiancé, and her son are in town," he located Jason just behind him and pulling him forward to introduce him. "Lana, this is Jason Lane—Jason, this is my friend Lana."

"Hullo Miss Lana," Jason said politely, holding his hand out to shake.

"Aren't you the cutest thing," she said, smiling and shaking his hand. Jason glanced at his dad, giving him the 'did she really just say that?' look. "How old are you?"

"I'll be five this week," Jason said, smiling at the thought of his birthday.

"Really? I have a daughter who'll be turning five this month."

"Really?" Clark asked. When he'd left she'd had a son named Ricky who was seven years old with her husband Brad Turner—the quarterback for the Smallville Crows in their day.

"Yep, Danielle. She's at home with Ricky, he's twelve now," she beamed like any proud mother would.

"That's great," Clark smiled, wishing he could take credit for the little boy standing next to him. Clark couldn't think of anything to say after that. An awkward silence was well on its way to forming when Lana's phone chirped in her purse, making her jump.

"Sorry," she apologized, fishing the phone out and turning away slightly to answer it. She frowned—it looked like it was going to e a long conversation.

"Sorry, Lana—we've got to head back to the farm," Clark apologized. "It was great seeing you."

"Yeah, bye," Lana said, giving a smile and a wave, before her face turned serious again and she returned to her conversation.

"She went to high school with you?" Jason asked after they'd paid for their stuff and were headed back to the truck.

"Yeah. She was one of my best friends," Clark smiled, giving Jason a leg-up into the cab.

"Was she your girlfriend?"

"No," Clark chuckled, giving Jason a look. "Why?"

"Just wondrin'," Jason shrugged, pulling the sparklers out of the bag and beginning the long process of reading the box.

- - -

"Good morning, starshine," Martha said, unusually chipper, the morning of the Fourth of July. Clark blinked at her.

"You slept in, Daddy," Jason observed from the kitchen table where he was eating a hearty farm breakfast, smiling around a forkful of hash browns. It was six o'clock in the morning—nobody else was up.

"Sorry," Clark said, glancing between the pair of them, "late night."

"Anything cool happen?"

"Uh… a NASCAR racer doing a practice run went airborn and would've crashed if I hadn't caught the car," Clark scratched the back of his head, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"Cool," Jason said, smiling and returning his attention to his breakfast.

"Your uncles are coming in this afternoon," Martha said, handing Clark a plate loaded up with jam-covered toast, bacon, sausage, hash browns, an omelet filled to the brim with cheese, peppers, ham, and the works.

"What time?"

"Sometime after three. In time for dinner."

Clark nodded, eating a piece of sausage.

"Is anything the matter, honey?" Martha finally asked.

"Nah," Clark shrugged, taking a few more bites before he looked up again. Martha and Jason were both giving him the same look, though Jason's was over the rim of his cup as he had a drink of juice. "Just thinking about the ongoing search… the lack of progress."

Martha patted him comfortingly on the shoulder as she moved toward the front door with her coffee to get the paper.

- - -

"That dog adores you," Lois observed, watching Clark tousle Shelby's ears fondly, the dog's tail wagging like crazy. They were sitting on the front steps, enjoying the sunshine, waiting for the Kent brothers to arrive. Jason and Richard were in the living room, Richard's shoulder incredibly sore from spending his nights on the couch, playing Uno. Martha was, as usual, in the kitchen baking up a storm. She had steaks thawing near the sink, keeping as much counter space available as possible for everything else she was making to feed her brothers-in-law.

"Yeah—I'm not around very much, but when I am…" he chuckled. Shelby decided she'd had enough pampering and lay down with her chin on Clark's boots.

"Man's best friend," Lois couldn't help but smile.

The pair of them sat in silence for awhile, both looking out at the sun playing on the cornstalks, the cows milling about in their pasture on the far side of the house, the horses in their paddock behind the barn. Birds were chirping as they went about their business in the yard. Altogether it was a fairly pleasant day.

"Why did you have to go, Clark?" Lois burst out, her voice soft so those in the house—the doors and windows were open, Martha refusing to turn on the air conditioning—wouldn't hear.

"What?" He asked, taken completely off guard by the question. They'd agreed to simply _not_ talk about anything more involved than smalltalk when it could be helped.

"I wish you'd stayed in Metropolis," she folded her arms on her knees and put her head on her arms, looking at him and Shelby sadly. "Everything would've been so much easier if you hadn't left."

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he sighed, unable to keep himself from putting a tendril of loose hair behind her ear before moving his hand over to rub her back soothingly. The look in her eyes made his heart beat faster. He'd never expected to feel so accepted by her without the Superman costume. They shared a look for a moment and Clark removed his hand from her back.

They sat in silence again for a minute before Lois sighed and frowned at him. "Richard isn't sure who to be jealous of anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"Apparently he thinks it's impossible for us to have been friends for so long without taking it a step further," she sighed.

"He was right… sort of," Clark couldn't help but smile. Lois smirked and then frowned.

"You and Superman came back and he was jealous of Superman. But now Superman and I aren't speaking, and… well."

"I'm not… let's not…" Clark cleared his throat. The rumble of a truck approaching stopped both of them, Lois sitting up and fixing a smile on her face. Shelby's ears quirked though she didn't sit up. "I think you're going to like my uncles," he sighed, looking at the approaching dust cloud.

"Happy Fourth of July!" Benjamin Kent said in his usual exuberant style, getting out of the driver's seat of his huge blue truck and grinning like an idiot. Lois immediately decided she liked him—he was what Lois imagined Clark would be like in forty years or so, though Clark would be lucky if he made it that far at the rate he was walking into filing cabinets.

"Benji, hi," Clark said with a matching toothy grin. He really was happy to see his uncle—he just wished he'd been able to get to some sort of resolution with Lois.

"Clark, long time no see!" The older man said, turning the handshake into a hug and patting him on the back. "How was your trip around the world?"

"It was great, the world's a big place."

"Plenty of architecture to see out there, eh?"

"You should see the scrapbooks Ma put together out of the pictures I brought back," Clark said with a smirk—Martha had been ecstatic to have an excuse to flaunt the pictures Clark had been taking across the world for years. He had always had a soft spot for architecture of the ancient world, a spot that had been nurtured by Uncle Benji through his youth—the elder man always had full color history books filled with pictures from around the world and promises to take Clark there some day. Benji, of course, had never seen anything but war on the continents that housed his greatest architectural dreams.

"I'll have to take a look at those—and who might you be?" Benji asked, turning his attention to Lois.

"Lois Lane," Lois said, having to bite her tongue to keep from following up with '_Daily Planet_,' as was her habit. "Clark and I work together at the_Planet_."

"Yes, I remember Martha mentioning you," Benji smiled, giving her a strong handshake. "You won a Pulitzer recently, didn't you?"

"Er, yeah," Lois smiled almost shyly. She wasn't sure how she felt about winning for that particular article just yet, no matter that Perry continued to insist nobody would remember what she'd won it for.

Benji glanced at Clark—that comment hadn't gone over so well as he'd hoped; the average person couldn't help but boast a bit about an achievement so commendable as a Pulitzer prize. Clark gave the smallest of shrugs.

"Benjamin Kent!" Martha's voice came from inside, a smile on her voice though the words were sharp. Clark scanned through the walls to see her walking toward the front door wiping the flour off her hands onto her apron. "Get in here this instant!"

"She's sure got a set of lungs, don't she?" Benji asked just loud enough for the pair next to him to hear and exchanging a grin with his nephew.

"Benji!" Martha said, appearing on the porch.

"Martha, m'dear, how are you?" Benji asked with a trademark Kent grin, bounding up the steps to give her a bear hug.

"Very well, you?" Martha asked, stepping back and getting a nod from Benji.

"Who's here?" Jason asked, appearing in the doorway with a curious look on his face. "Mom?"

"This is my uncle, Benji," Clark said.

"Hullo, Uncle Benji," Jason said. Clark chuckled to himself—for a boy with two parents with nothing but sisters, Jason sure had a lot of uncles.

"Hello, there, sport," Benji said, shaking Jason's hand as well. "Nice to meet ya."

"You too," Jason smiled widely.

"Why don't you go get your dad, Jason?" Lois suggested.

"Okay."

Jason turned and went back in the house to get Richard off the couch just as an engine revved as the truck sped down the driveway. Clark stepped out away from the porch aways to greet whichever uncle was arriving, Benji stepping next to him. The driver didn't stop until the last possible second, sending a plume of dust and grit out over his brother and nephew.

"Thank you, Rick, that was wonderful," Benji said tolerantly when the older man got out of the cab. Benji and Rick were almost identical though they were two years apart in age—the two older brothers of the five infamous Kent boys. All five of them had dark brown eyes and curly blond hair. Rick and Benji were as tall as Clark, barrel chested with shoulders not quite as wide as Clark's. Their hair was no longer blond, now as silver as Martha's with a hint of white, and their faces were more wrinkled than Clark remembered.

"Clark, you haven't aged a day! Lucky shit," Rick said. He was the oldest of the Kent brothers; a lifelong bachelor who'd given his life to the Navy until his old knee injury had forced him into retirement. He'd returned to Smallville a little world-weary and more than ready to be surrounded by a sea of corn instead of an actual sea.

"You're looking pretty good yourself," Clark chuckled—Rick had been telling him he hadn't aged a day since he was ten and Clark's response had never changed.

"Get up here and say hello!" Martha instructed, prompting Rick to leave the other two behind, brushing the dust off of themselves, to give Martha a hug. Clark chuckled—Martha had had the Kent brothers wrapped around her little finger since high school, when she'd started dating Jonathan (the youngest). Clark followed after them as they went inside, still laughing.

"Shut yer trap, son," Rick barked in his best impression of a drill sergeant—and he did a very good impression—and Clark shut his mouth, but continued smirking. Rick smiled in triumph as they entered the living room to find Richard and Jason putting away the Uno cards. Introductions were made and Martha settled everybody in the living room with coffee and tea.

"Did you have a nice drive down?" Martha asked, turning to Rick after bringing her own coffee in from the kitchen.

"Course," Rick said bluntly, "saw lots of corn."

"You know, I keep telling Wade that the corn is trying to take over the planet, but he just keeps hanging up on me," Benji deadpanned, shaking his head. "Poor excuse for a sheriff—doesn't even listen to his elders…"

"You're not old enough to be an elder Benjamin Kent," Martha informed him with a smile.

"Why thank you, Martha, I do think you deserve another hug for that," Benji chuckled, hugging her again as she chuckled.

"Missus Martha, I think the cookies are done," Jason interrupted, poking his head out from the archway to the kitchen where he'd followed her for the purpose of checking their latest baking expedition.

"Let's have a look, shall we?" Martha said, mourning the loss of the title 'gramma' in the presence of the men. She opened the oven to look in on the cookies and saw perfectly browned chocolate chip cookies sitting on the cookie sheet inside. "I think you might just be right, Jason," she said, grabbing the oven mitt and pulling the tray out. "Why don't you put that sheet in—watch your fingers, it's hot in there."

Jason rolled his eyes, but obeyed after catching Clark's eye with a look that said 'Dad, your mom is weird.' The gesture didn't go unnoticed by the uncles in the room, and neither did the remarkable color of Jason's eyes, though neither said anything.

Martha and Jason were handing out cookies to everyone when the conversation was interrupted by the sound of tires on gravel once again.

The last two brothers getting out of their cars with their wives when everybody made it outside. Rob and David, brothers three and four, were shorter than the other three, and were more mellow, David with a bit of a belly. Benji and Rick were the extroverts, sarcastic and loud, while Rob and David were the quiet, former honor roll students who followed the older pair's lead and occasionally offered their own wit. Jonathan had been the youngest, but his personality had fit between the two sets, with the added benefit of four older brothers who were fiercely protective.

None of them had ever had any children, Rick spending his life in the Navy, Benji losing his wife before they'd settled enough to start a family, Rob and his wife living through three miscarriages before giving up on a family of their own, and David's wife infertile. Clark and his sister had been raised by the extended family; it was a miracle Clark's secret had stayed a secret with all the people around. When the pair of them were young, the Kent brothers had all lived in the area, excluding Rick who'd spent most of his time in San Diego. As the years passed, the brothers had moved farther away; David and his wife, and Benji were the only ones in the area when Jessica died, and Benji was the only one who still lived in Smallville proper—he lived in the town, Jonathan having taken over the family farm—when Jonathan died. The months following Jonathan's death had brought Clark and Benji a lot closer, Benji helping Clark run the farm during Martha's struggle through her depression.

No matter where they ended up, though, the Kent brothers had gathered at the Kent farm every Fourth of July. Mostly, it was because Hiram Kent, their father, had been a pyromaniac, keeping a fire-proof standing closet in the barn that he and the boys filled with fireworks over the course of the year and unloaded late into the night every Independence Day. Tradition held over the years, long after their father's and Jonathan's deaths, bringing the remaining brothers back home.

"Rob, David, glad you could make it," Clark said when he reached the porch, smiling. "Ladies, good to see you."

Rob's wife Anne and David's wife Celia were much like their husbands, shy and introspective. Anne was the younger of them, still dying her hair to hide the silver.

"Afternoon, everybody!" Celia called, walking out around the car to find somebody to hug.

They spent more than an hour standing out by the trucks, talking and bantering—the Kents catching up while they brought Lois and Richard up to speed on who everybody was. Jason drifted to one side to play with Shelby after everybody had told him how cute he was. Lois and Rick immediately latched onto each other, their senses of humor almost identical.

It took another hour to get the bags sorted into the right rooms. Benji offered to put somebody up at his house in town, but Martha insisted there was room at the house. After a short battle of wills, Benji had helped Rob and Anne get their things upstairs.

"Get the meat!" Benji was soon calling, taking the well-thawed steaks from the kitchen counter and heading out to the grill. She now understood why Martha had spent the better part of every day for the past week in the kitchen—Martha, Celia, and Anne spent the afternoon finishing off the food preparations; tossing the salad, locating the cottage cheese in the very back of the fridge, baking the bread dough and filling the house with marvelous smells. It didn't seem to do much good, though—the Kent brothers set upon any and all food in the kitchen to the point when Martha had to shoo them out to the yard.

Lois stayed out of the kitchen, warning that she had a habit of ruining anything and everything that took place in the kitchen. Instead, she sat on the steps, watching the 'boys' play. Clark had produced a soccer ball and thrown it at Benji's feet. Benji had kicked it back, and so it had begun. Jason had watched plenty of soccer matches as he'd spent the first five years of his life with an International editor who preferred European football to American, but he'd never been allowed to play because of his asthma. As his asthma was all but gone after the events on the _Gertrude_, nothing was said about teaching him the sport.

Twenty minutes later, it was Clark, Rick, and Jason against Benji, David, and Rob. Richard, cursing his shoulder, sat with Lois on the porch steps and kept score while he kept an eye on the grill. Shelby sat at the foot of the stairs, watching.

- - -

"Do you remember when you first came to us?" Rob asked Clark late that evening; they were getting ready for fireworks. Jason was playing with his sparklers, delighted at the way they fizzed. Shelby was watching him intently, looking as though she'd like to play as well. Richard had gone to bed early, his shoulder throbbing badly; he'd promised Jason he'd watch from the bedroom window if he could, though. Benji and Clark were unloading the fireproof cabinet and setting things up, Rick was laying blankets out for them to sit on and watch the upcoming display. Rob and David were reclining on one of the blankets already on the ground with their wives, beers in hand, reminiscing and trying to draw others into the conversation. Lois sat opposite them on the blanket, listening. There would be plenty of complaints by the end of the night about old hips with nothing but blankets between them and the ground.

"Not really, why?" Clark asked, setting his load down and pausing to listen before heading back to the barn.

"You had that wacky accent—you remember that, Martha?"

Martha nodded, sitting down and handing Clark the lighter he and Jason had bought at the hardware store.

"Like an Irish Russian trying to do a Spanish accent in English," Rick said, shaking his head and chuckling. Clark shook his head as though he didn't believe it, giving a wry smile before heading back into the barn for a second load and hoping Lois wouldn't ask questions.

Half an hour later, they were ready for the show. Jason had used up all of his sparklers and sat between his mother and grandmother, using Shelby as a pillow.

"You got everything alright, Clark?" Lois asked, seeing a burst of flame before there should've been.

"Yeah, it's fine," Clark said, shifting so his body hid the firework and lighter from view. He'd never quite mastered the lighter, having his own built-in substitute.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I was a boyscout. I can handle this."

"If you say so."

Jason giggled.

A few seconds later the first firework shot into the sky. Clark had been lighting them since he was sixteen and had discovered his invulnerability. His parents had told his uncles he'd taken after Hiram, but the truth was they felt it was safer for him to play with the fire as he couldn't get hurt. It worked for Clark—he didn't want to think of the guilt he would feel if somebody else lit one of them and something went wrong.

Clark, hidden in the darkness, didn't even try to hide his smile at Jason's amazement at each firework. Every explosion of light illuminated Jason's awed features and drew an adorable 'ooh' or 'ah.'

Clark had had a good day. It had started putting out fires in California, usually the perfect event to set him up for a bad day, but the fires had actually stayed put out, making it a pleasant, if warm, morning. He'd been back to Smallville in time to get breakfast straight out of the pan. He'd spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in the barn fiddling with the tractor, talking to Jason for awhile and then Lois. Lunch was Martha's homemade chicken noodle soup, Clark's favorite since he was at least twelve. He'd fixed the tractor, hopefully for good this time, Richard and Jason helping with the handing of the tools. He was surprised at how easily he got along with Richard—they would probably have been good friends had it not been for their situation. With Jason in the room, though, there was no tension. Benji and Rick had arrived not soon after, quickly followed by Rob, David, Anne, and Celia. He'd spent the rest of the afternoon trying to hold onto his reputation as a klutz in front of Lois and Richard while not losing face in front of his old uncles while teaching Jason the game of soccer, or football as Rick and Richard insisted on calling it. Dinner had come too soon and still without a single call for Superman, a rarity in itself. Steak on the grill, fresh baked bread, salad with homegrown vegetables, and Celia's infamous baked potatoes—it was enough to have any city kid's arteries aching and any country kid's stomach growling. Jason had two servings of everything but steak, just like all the men at the table, and Lois ate her first non-vegetarian meal in five years, unable to resist the perfectly grilled steaks sitting in the center of the table, taunting her. The evening had passed quickly with the usual kitchen and farm chores, the old men breezing through the motions they'd been following since their youth and making it entertaining for the younger generation. Clark disappeared for awhile to make his rounds of the world, finding nothing more pressing than helping Mr. Snuffles out of a tree (again). The fireworks were pulled out, blankets spread on the ground, and Clark hadn't even heard any teenagers being stupid with their own fireworks in his scope of hearing. And Jason was having a good time.

"You're good, you know," Rick said late that night; they were sitting on their respective couches in the living room in pajamas, pillows and blankets ready on the couches. Clark ran a hand through his hair sleepily, raising a confused eyebrow. Rick smiled, shaking his head; "How long've you been sleeping with Miss Lane?"

"P-pardon?" Clark spluttered, slipping deep into his office persona when put on the spot. Rick continued smirking at him, raising his own eyebrow. Clark cleared his throat, "We're _not_ sleeping together, Rick," he said, his voice in its natural register but nearly a whisper.

"Oh, don't even try to lie. You know you can't keep a secret from an old fart like me—I've seen everything," he smirked knowingly, "and done a bit myself."

"And my entire childhood has just been turned on its ear," Clark chuckled, thinking of the idealized images of his uncle in his crisp white uniform his parents had kept on the mantle through his childhood. He hadn't been fooled, especially not after the experience of high school, but having his uncle's love life, however _interesting_, revealed was not something he needed to be hearing so many years later and after his own love life had become so unorthodox. Rick just chuckled.

"As I said, you're both very good, I doubt Mr. White suspects, let alone your mother, but you can't fool an old dog who knows all the tricks," Rick winked. "Even Shelby knows—she follows that boy around like he was you... or yours."

"Uncle Rick…" Clark said, shaking his head and holding up a hand.

"Don't _Uncle Rick_ me," Rick chuckled—the only time Clark used 'uncle' any more was when he was losing.

"I'm not sleeping with Lois."

"But you did… perhaps before your trip?"

"Goodnight, Rick," Clark said, rolling over, leaving his glasses on the coffee table but keeping his face turned and in the shadows.

"Goodnight, Clark," Rick said, still chuckling.

- - -

Clark woke up a few hours later to a boy and a dog standing next to his head. Jason was poking his shoulder gently. "Dad," he whispered, poking again.

"Jason?" Clark asked, turning over and blinking at his son.

"Everything is so loud. Why is everything so loud?" Jason whispered.

"What do you hear?" Clark asked, being sure to keep his voice low, more for Jason's sake than Rick's—his uncle was awake and listening.

"Fireworks," Jason shrugged, "but it's too late, they should be asleep. And people talking, I think they're in town. And there's cars on the highway. And the wind is blowing really hard in the corn. And there's lots of heartbeats and breathing in the house, but Shelby's is different. Is it because she's a dog?" He asked, still talking softly as though his own voice hurt his ears.

"Yes, animals sound different from people," Clark whispered back

"It's so loud," Jason whispered again, frowning. He stuck his fingers in his ears, but it didn't help.

"Can you listen to just one sound?" Clark asked, but Jason shook his head. "How about telling me how many cars are on the highway?" Jason took his fingers out of his ears and scrunched up his face in concentration, shaking his head a moment later.

"Everything else is too loud. Why is it so loud?"

"How about Shelby's heartbeat? Can you listen to just that?" Jason looked reluctant, but he concentrated again. He put his arms around the dog, sitting down on the floor next to him and pressing his ear to the dog's side. Clark sat forward, a hand on his son's head stroking his hair.

"Too much," Jason whispered a moment later, his hands coming from around the dog and fingers going in his ears again.

"C'mon, I'll take you someplace quiet," Clark said, his voice still a whisper. Jason nodded, wrapping his arms around Clark's neck as he stood up, still trying to keep his ears covered.

Clark made his way silently across the living room, aware of his uncle's racing heartbeat. Shelby followed them out, staying at Clark's knee as she always did. He let her follow them out, ruffling her ears tenderly when they reached the bottom of the steps, "Sorry girl, you don't like flying."

"How do you know?" Jason asked, giggling but keeping one ear firmly pressed against Clark's bare chest to keep the sound out.

"Animals without wings don't like flying as a general rule," Clark chuckled. Jason smiled as they rose silently into the sky.

They flew for a half an hour, as high in the sky as Clark dared bring Jason. They went north first, to the pole where it was quiet. As the noise fell behind around them, Jason relaxed in his arms. They talked, quietly, about when Clark was a boy and how his powers developed.

"What happens if something happens when I'm not staying with you?" Jason asked, worried.

"I can always hear you, Jason."

"But it hurts to hear everything!"

"Not after you have time to get used to it and learn how to tune the little things out—like the wind in the corn. The corn is always moving around and rustling, but I don't listen to it all the time."

"Just like Mom's always telling me to put my shoes under the bench when I come inside, but I don't listen to her every time."

"Yeah, like that," Clark chuckled, but became very serious; "But you should always listen to your mother."

"But they're just shoes," Jason sighed, obviously annoyed—Clark just chuckled.

"My mother gets after me about my shoes too, don't worry."

Jason was asleep on Clark's shoulder when they landed on the porch. Shelby gave a grunt of recognition, bumping gently against Clark's knee as a greeting, "Hey girl," he whispered, opening the door and following her in.

Rick was sitting up on the couch waiting when they walked in. Clark put a finger to his lips before heading up the steps to his old bedroom and tucking Jason into bed. "G'night, Dad," Jason said groggily, snuggly deeper into the blankets.

"G'night, Jason."


	18. Chapter 18

Clark made his way slowly down the hall, not looking forward to the conversation waiting for him downstairs. The heartbeats coming from the rooms around him told him everybody else was soundly asleep. That thought relaxed him slightly, nobody else would hear what was said on the first floor, and it meant Lois had finally gotten to sleep—she'd been tossing and turning all night.

Sucking it up, he went downstairs.

"Let's go for a walk, shall we?" Rick said when he reached the bottom step. The tone told Clark there was no getting out of the suggested walk, Superman or not.

He simply nodded, lacing up his work boots and grabbing his jacket on the way out. They walked down the driveway, silence reigning between the two of them. The crickets were singing, making them both introspective. "So what can you hear?" Rick asked when they reached the end of the driveway, turning right. Clark listened a moment before answering.

"I'm only listening to the crickets," Clark shrugged, but then he realized he wasn't being honest, chuckling. "And the truck going eighty-three just south of here, the wind up in flight range, the corn, your sounds, heartbeats back at the house… What do you hear?"

"Just the crickets."

"Must be nice."

Rick stopped in his tracks, giving Clark an odd look. Clark stopped a few steps further on, turning back to look at his uncle, face inscrutable. In that moment, he didn't look like Clark, he looked like Superman. Rick hadn't seen him without glasses since his early teen years, but he'd seen Superman's face plenty of times and never put it together. The man looking back over his shoulder wasn't quite either of those people. He wasn't familiar, but he wasn't a stranger either. Then Clark smiled and the moment was broken.

"What do you mean?" Rick finally asked, catching up and keeping walking.

"Must be nice not to have to filter out everything all the time. It's a headache waiting to happen."

"I thought you were invulnerable."

"My skin is impenetrable," Clark shrugged. "But having to filter out everything from the footsteps upstairs to radio frequencies while still trying not to miss calls for help added to trying to concentrate on the task at hand and bad fluorescent lighting… headaches aren't uncommon, and medicine tailored to human physiology is… unhelpful."

"You can hear radio frequencies?"

"Yep, but it's only the ones playing all static all the time that ever manage to break to the surface… that and Lex Luthor."

"Lex Luthor?" Rick hadn't even gotten to that part of Superman's life yet.

"His favorite way to lure me out to try and kill me is contacting me through high frequency radio broadcasts."

They walked on in silence for a minute. "Do you always hear our heartbeats?"

"I can find them anywhere, any time, but otherwise you're all super-bug-free," Clark shrugged. "I hear Jason and Lois's all the time without even trying, they won't get out of my head, and I check Ma's every night."

"Why?"

"After Dad's heart attack…it's the last thing I want to hear from Ma… I know she's not at risk so far as any doctor we've ever talked to is concerned, but… it's nice to hear it for myself."

"That's not a pleasant thought, hearing Johnny's heart attack."

"It wasn't a pleasant experience."

"I'm sorry I wasn't around more to help."

"It was a long time ago, we survived," Clark chuckled. "Lord knows I've made my own mistakes when it comes to when not to be around."

"Jason's your son."

"I didn't know until a few months ago, when I got back."

"Did you find whatever you were looking for?"

"A graveyard," Clark chuckled bitterly. "Don't tell Ma, but it was a graveyard of kryptonite. It was the most miserable year of my life."

"You're okay, though?"

"I'm fine," the answer was quick enough for Rick to know that Clark wasn't quite fine. They continued on, Rick waiting for the rest of the response and Clark debating whether to give it to him or not. "I missed a lot. A lot of important things."

"You're here now."

"Not the way I should be," Clark laughed bitterly again, and then everything came out. "Do you remember when General Zod attacked and Superman was nowhere to be found?" Rick nodded. "Well, that's because I was with Lois. I'd given up my powers to make a life with her, but the cosmos had other plans," he sighed. "When Zod was dealt with, we decided we couldn't be together. What if something like that happened again? What if somebody found out about our relationship? The press would have a hey-day, any and every criminal could use her to bate me or blackmail me or whatever. But she couldn't live with that, she was miserable. So I took her memories—it's complicated, don't even ask—and we moved on, back to just being Lois and Clark working together at the _Planet_, Lois getting interviews with Superman and flirting herself numb, whining about the lack of progress to Clark," he shook his head. "So I left, _I_ couldn't live with that. Ma was furious, but she understood. I told everybody I was going on a trip around the world, who knew when or if I'd come back, that sort of thing. It finally gave Ma an excuse to make an album of all the pictures I've taken for her around the world anyway. Then I got back," he skipped over the trip entirely, not wanting to think about it. "I didn't know Jason was mine until he threw a piano across Luthor's yacht to save his mother's life… he's been showing little signs like that randomly. Tonight it was his hearing. A couple of weeks ago it was strength. Anyway, I got back and everything was different. Lois was engaged to Richard and I thought they had a son together. Then the 'New Krypton Fiasco,' as my editor is calling it, happened. Turns out Lois and Richard's relationship has been on the rocks for months, since long before Richard's son turned out not to be his son. Lois doesn't know I'm Superman; she and I, him, whatever, are trying to work things out so far as Jason's powers go and guidance in that area, but she's furious. Understandably. Hell, _I'm_ furious at myself for my choices, but…" he sighed again. "Can't change the past," another chuckle. "Actually, I _can_, but no way I'm turning back five years." Rick was silent, still listening even though he was on the edge of being lost. "About a week after everything Lois decided we were friends again, Lois and Clark. It makes working together a lot easier, for her at least."

"But you've been sleeping with her."

"No, I haven't," Clark insisted, frowning at his uncle. "What's got that in your head?"

"The way you look at each other," Rick said, stopping again and leaning against the fence beside the road. Clark joined him, looking across the fields in the darkness. Rick observed him for a moment, wondering how far he could see.

"She's engaged to Richard."

"You said yourself that relationship is on the rocks."

"And I'd rather not be the catalyst," Clark frowned. "Richard is Jason's father in a way I can never be."

"_You _are Jason's father in a way _Richard_ can never be," Rick countered. Clark gave him a look.

"I can't be around like he, and Lois, deserves; I fly off at all hours of the day to 'save the world.' Not exactly the makings a great home-life."

"An unusual situation, not an impossible one."

"And how will Jason feel when I have to run to Uganda in the middle of his piano recital? How would Lois feel waking up every morning alone?"

Rick shook his head and looked out over the field. They stood in silence for a long moment. Clark let his hearing drift out over the corn to the familiar farms of Smallville and the town proper. Even after so many years the sounds were familiar.

"Richard's a good guy," Clark explained. "And I was gone a long time."

"Time only makes the heart grow fonder," Rick provided, smirking at his nephew. Clark looked over, smiling and shaking his head.

"I can't win, can I:?"

"Not a chance," he smiled, but then his face turned serious. "I was in the service for a long time, Clark," Rick said slowly. Clark listened closely. He rarely heard serious stories about his uncle's time with the Navy, though he'd heard plenty drinking stories and other funny tales over the years. "There were a lot of men, and their families, who were shipped around a lot, moving constantly. There were a lot of men who were shipped out to places their families couldn't follow; they were gone a long time. It was hard for everybody involved in those situations—it's part of the reason why I never got married. I didn't want to put anybody through that," he paused a moment. "I regret that now."

Rick started walking again, leaving Clark leaning against the fence as he digested his uncle's wisdom. Rick had turned onto a path through the corn that would bring them back to the farm eventually by the time Clark blinked himself out of his thoughts. He rose silently into the air and dropped down into step beside his uncle, who shook his head in wonder.

"My God, you're actually Superman," Rick said. Clark cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck unfomfortably. Rick paused a moment, his face cracking into his customary grin; "You fly around in tights and a cape on a daily basis."

"In my defense," Clark said, holding up a finger, "Anything but the 'tights' and it wouldn't survive the wind."

"The wind…?"

"Flying," Clark made a swooping motion with one hand.

"Alright, you're off the hook for the tights," Rick said, nodding grudgingly. Clark chuckled and the pair of them walked a few strides in amiable silence. It was Rick's character to act as though the serious conversation had never taken place, and, for the moment, Clark was happy not to have to address the new piece of advice.

They weren't halfway down the path when Clark's step hitched and his head twitched ever so slightly to the north. Rick frowned, raising an eyebrow and waiting for his nephew to return to the cornfield. "What just happened?" He asked when Clark blinked and refocused on his face.

"Oh, um," Clark thumbed toward South Dakota, "Actually, I should probably…" he made the hand motion again. Rick's eyes got a little wider and he nodded his understanding. "I'll, uh, be—back."

"Right, er, go ahead, then."

Clark gave his uncle one more look before running down the road, taking a few strides at a regular, human pace before going faster, the corn beside the road rippling in his wake. Rick's face broke into a slow smile as he continued his walk back to the farmhouse. A few seconds later he caught the shadow of Superman flying overhead followed closely by a sonic boom.

- - -

Clark returned to the farmhouse a half an hour later, wondering at the stupidity of some tourists—a minivan full of twenty-somethings had gone for a late night drive along Needle's Highway in the Black Hills and managed to arrive at a particularly curvy spot in the road just in time for the falling rocks the signs warned of to fall.

Crisis averted, Clark landed on the front porch and spun out of the Suit back into his pajama bottoms. He glanced through the front wall of the house and wasn't surprised to see Rick sitting awake on his couch, the TV turned on but muted, captions running along the bottom of the screen.

Clark entered silently, locking the door behind him and making his way to the living room where his pillow and blanket waited.

"_Jesus_ Christ in Heaven!" Rick said, jerking violently when he noticed Clark standing behind the second couch. "Clark Joseph Kent where the _hell_ did you come from?" Rick ran a hand through his stiff white hair, heart rate slowing to a more normal rate.

"Nice little planet, Krypton—it blew up," Clark shrugged amiably, flopping over the back of the couch. He checked his fall a centimeter before he slammed down on the cushions, landing gently instead and relaxing back into his pillow. Rick stared at him, flipping the television off.

"Oh, uh, no—I just meant…" Rick snorted. "Where did you go? There wasn't any news coverage."

"South Dakota," Clark sighed, glancing up through the ceiling and finding everybody deeply asleep. Rick raised an eyebrow. "Well, only about half of the stuff I do is really noticed… it's late, there weren't many people around."

"Oh," Rick blinked.

"We should go to sleep," Clark said after a moment, glancing at the clock. "The sun'll be up in a couple of hours and I guarantee Jason'll be down here as it rises."

"It's the farmboy in him," Rick said with a smile.

"That and the annoying little buggers in his blood that soak up sunlight like batteries and won't let him sleep during daylight," Clark shrugged.

"Annoying little buggers in the blood," Rick quoted, a chuckle in his voice. "Now there's a thought."

They sat in silence for a few moments before Rick spoke again.

"You really haven't aged a day, have you?" Rick said. Clark shook his head almost sadly, turning off the light.

"Who knows if I ever will?"

- - -

Benji was back for breakfast the next morning, arriving at about five in the morning and letting himself in. He found Rick and Clark already awake and making breakfast, Jason sitting on a stool to sone side and munching on a piece of toast while he watched the other two cooking.

"You two never _could_ sleep through a sunrise and let me surprise everybody, could you?"

"We do it just to spite you, you know," Rick was, turning the sausages in the frying pan at his hand.

"I suspected as much."

After about twenty minutes, Lois tumbled down the stairs, fully dressed and ready for her day, but looking hopelessly exhausted. Clark couldn't help but chuckle as he held out what had become her mug while she visited, filled to the brim with the strongest, blackest coffee that could come out of the ancient coffee maker. "Shutup, Kent," she grunted, sinking into one of the chairs at the table and pulling one of the copies of the _Planet_ towards her. A few seconds later, half her coffee gone, Lois was completely awake and standing up over the paper. "Clark! Look at this! I'm gonna _kill_ Perry! He let _Gil_ finish your piece on the links between that Judge Eve lady and Lex Luthor. He didn't even put your name on the byline! You did all the research and fact-checking! Hell, I'm pretty sure you wrote the intro _and_ conclusion to this piece—the prose screams Kent as loudly as your stupid glasses," she snorted, glaring between him and the paper. "_You didn't give permission for this, did you_?" She asked when he didn't seem surprised.

"Well, _actually_…" he started, but Lois cut him off with a loud groan.

"Claaark!"

"I'd only started it—hardly an outline."

"But you _know_ how the crazies come out of the woodwork when Luthor's involved," she refilled her mug, her focus entirely on Clark. Rick and Benji continued to prepare a huge country breakfast, listening, Jason continuing to swing his legs on his stool, giggling at his parents' antics. Clark had stepped aside with his own mug of coffee, leaning over the top of a chair to read the article he'd outlined before he and Lois had gotten so deeply involved in the kidnapping investigations. His assignment had been to find out what Luthor had been up to between his acquittal and the return of Superman. He hadn't uncovered much but for a strange correlation between a Judge Eve's bank account and the number of Luthor's known flunkies she put on probation, as opposed to in prison. There wasn't much solid evidence to prove anything, just enough for a side bar remarking on the relationship in the hope that the police would mount their own investigation.

"There wasn't enough information for an accusation not to be suicide," Clark said, finishing the article Gil had put together based on his outline. "It's just information and suggestions."

"The typical Clark roundabout," Lois rolled her eyes. "Patience like no other, this one," she glanced at his uncles, who nodded their agreement.

"Slow and steady wins the race," Clark said evenly, finishing off his coffee and sitting down to flip through the sports pages so that Lois could finish looking through City.

"So Perry sends _Gil_ on the kamikaze mission?"

"Gil's a sports writer—his only enemies are employees of the _Star_."

"So it makes perfect sense for him to write a side bar for the front page having nothing to do with sports," Lois deadpanned.

"You make it sound like I chose who Perry assigned it to."

"But _Gil_!"

"Lois."

"_Honstely_," she groaned, grabbing the phone off the wall and punching in the number she'd had memorized since Perry had gotten the phone.

"G'morning, Lois," Perry said when he picked up the phone, not even needing to look at the caller ID.

"Perry," Lois said sharply, flipping the paper back to the front page to have a look at Gil's article again. "_Gil_?"

"Yeah, I thought you might call about that."

Lois was even more eager to return to Metropolis after her phone conversation with Perry. She didn't like being out of the loop. She didn't like not writing. She didn't like the peace and quiet of the small town. She missed having people to yell at. She missed the excitement of chasing down a story. She missed her byline on the front page.

- - -

The kitchen was crowded for breakfast; Jason and Shelby underfoot, the adults preparing the food and locating plates and chairs for everybody, passing the paper around and talking over each other. For Martha, it was Heaven—a kitchen full of family, bustling with activity, bellies filling. The Kent brothers were at home as well, back in the kitchen of their childhood with good company and conversation. Jason was at home as well, it was Richard and Lois who felt out of place. Lois who was used to tense family gatherings at best. And Richard, who simply felt out of place among them all.

It was evident to Clark by the end of the meal that, after less than a week, it was high time to get back to Metropolis.

After an hour or so in the living room looking at the scrapbooks of Clark's pictures Martha had put together over the years, Rob and Anne took their leave, soon followed by Dave and Celia—both couples had a few hours' drive home. Benji left shortly after to get things taken care of at his house, ordering them all to stop by for dinner before they left town. Rick stuck around for lunch, shooting glances at his nephew and his sister-in-law. It made Martha nervous.

"Uncle Clark, can we show Daddy the horses?" Jason asked, looking between his two fathers for affirmation.

"Sure," Clark said, smiling and glancing at Richard, who shrugged his good shoulder.

"I'm game."

"You better come too, Mom," Jason said, giving his mother a serious look. "The horses liked you before."

"Alright," Lois chuckled.

Rick fidgeted for a moment before Martha finally confronted him.

"What has gotten into you, Rick?"

"What?"

"You're fidgeting."

"I am?"

"Yes. You are. What's going on?"

"Um, well… Clark and I kind of had an interesting conversation last night," he said warily, looking out the window at Jason. Martha frowned.

"What sort of an interesting conversation?" Martha asked lightly, turning toward the sink and washing a dish.

"It, uh, had a lot to do with Superman, actually."

"Really?" Martha asked, looking over her shoulder to gauge how much Clark had told him. The continued fidgeting and steady stare telling Martha all she needed to know. Slowly, she rinsed the dish and placed it on the drying rack before turning to look at Rick, her face more serious than he'd ever seen it. She tilted her head to one side, waiting for him to speak.

- - -

"How are you feeling?" Clark asked Richard that evening. It was late—Jason was asleep, exhausted after a long day playing in the yard with Shelby and dinking around with the worn out soccer ball. Lois and Martha were talking in the kitchen while Clark and Richard watched the news in the living room.

"Like I got shot," Richard replied, shrugging with his good shoulder.

"It's healing alright, though?"

"As far as I can tell," he replied, sounding as though he was resigned to having a conversation with a man he'd decided was competition.

"That's good."

"It's nice here," Richard said after a beat. Clark nodded, smiling even though Richard didn't sound entirely sincere. "Very… peaceful."

"In other words, nothing like the bullpen," Clark chuckled, getting a smile in return. "I know what you mean."

"Lois won't last much longer," Richard stated, plain and simple. Clark shook his head, agreeing.

"Not enough action."

"Exactly."

They paused, watching the latest report from Metropolis. There was a brief mention of the exploding lilies intended for Lois, attached to a blurb about Lois and Clark's continued MIA status.

"It would probably not be a good idea to go back just yet," Clark sighed, getting a nod from Richard.

"Too much attention."

"This entire situation is ridiculous," Clark nearly growled, swallowing his frustration after the moment and continuing to glare at the TV.

- - -

The next day had them out in Smallville proper. Leaving Martha at home, the other four visited Lana's coffee shop to get out of the house.

"So all three of you work at the _Daily Planet_?" Lana asked, sitting down at their booth after delivering their coffees and a cocoa for Jason.

"Mommy and Unca Clark write big articles and talk to Superman," Jason told her, eagerly taking the top off of the cocoa to have a look at the whipped cream on top. "And Daddy's an assisistant editor," he gave a large, charming grin complete with whipped cream mustache. Lana smirked and Lois attacked the mustache with a napkin.

"Sounds like lots of fun," Lana said. Jason smiled again.

"Mommy!" A young voice called from the doorway in the same moment the bell chimed. Lana twisted around to look at the door, a wide smile on her face.

"Hey, girlie, what are you doing here?" Lana asked her daughter, standing up to give her a hug.

"Comin' to say hullo," the little girl, Danielle, shrugged and stepped back, smiling and looking at the people sitting with her mother.

"Hey, honey," Brad said, entering the shop with Ricky right behind him.

"Brad, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, you know—afternoons are slow, we thought we'd stop in to keep you company," he paused, looking at the adults at the table. "That's not Clark Kent."

"Hi, Brad," Clark said a little uncomfortably, holding out a hand for the other man to shake.

"Jeez, we haven't seen you around here since right after your dad died," Brad observed, shaking his head.

"Yeah, it's been awhile," Clark agreed, glancing at Lana. He'd never been good friends with Brad. He and Lana had known each other since early childhood, their parents being old friends. They'd gone to high school together, Clark was home schooled until ninth grade for the sake of secrets, and had even gone to junior prom together. Brad and his family had moved to Smallville the summer after their junior year. Clark had been dealing with the loss of his sister, sequestering himself on the farm in the lounge in the loft. If there had been any romantic possibilities between them, they had been buried with Jessica. Lana had attempted to break through Clark's emotionless shell and gotten fed up with it, beginning to spend time with the new guy in town. By the beginning of their senior year, Lana and Brad were near insperable. They were married a year after they graduated while Clark was running the farm and making weekly trips to Topeka for his mother's appointments with a psychologist. In short, Clark and Brad had never had time to become friends.

"You're in Metropolis now, right?" Brad asked, taking the seat at the table Jason had vacated upon the introduction of someone his own age. Danielle, Jason, and Ricky had disappeared into the back to play in the break room.

"Yeah," Clark said—he didn't seem to be able to get much more than that out before Brad started talking again.

"You know, Bill Ganelon and his wife just moved out there last year," Brad said conversationally. "Bill had a business venture to follow, I think… have you seen him at all?"

"Actually, I've just been back in the States for a few months."

"Where did you go?" Lana asked.

"Soul searching," Lois said, rolling her eyes.

- - -

Clark flew high above the world, practically in orbit, deep in thought. After spending the afternoon at Lana's coffee shop, they had retrieved Martha from the farm and spent the evening at Benji's in Smallville proper. Jason had a good time looking through all the different sorts of things Benji had collected over the years while Lois collected embarrassing stories from Clark's childhood from Martha and Benji (there had been too much for the Kents to catch up on over the Fourth of July to tell stories of Clark's childhood). Richard was mostly stationary, his shoulder itchy and stiff and putting him in a bad mood altogether.

After returning to the farm, Richard had gone straight to bed after taking his pain medication. Jason went straight to bed as well, exhausted from his afternoong in the coffee shop's break room with the first people remotely near his own age he'd seen all week. Martha had followed shortly after, leaving Lois and Clark downstairs to watch the news. As had happened with Richard the previous evening, the story to mention seemed to be the exploding lilies in the prison parking lot.

"Looks like we'll be here for awhile, if Perry has anything to say about it," Lois sighed.

"Could be worse," Clark said, getting a look from her. "We could be in Niagara Falls."

Lois didn't remember the entire experience, but she remembered enough to know she'd most certainly rather not be in Niagara Falls.

It was that conversation that had him thinking so far above the world a few hours later that night.

He flew to Metropolis, missing the lights and sounds of the city more than he'd expected. He loved Smallville, but Metropolis had become home.

The world was mysteriously quiet, though the feeling in the air was that of an approaching storm. There was no telling what front the storm was approaching on.

_You should tell Lois_. The voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded ridiculously close to Lois's voice, informed him. The voice had been getting louder since he'd returned to Earth and it was near impossible to ignore.

He flew around the world, drowning out the voice with rescues for as long as he could. It was always there, though. Forcing his thoughts to drift back to the situation with Lois whenever there was a moment between rescues.

"You alright, Superman?" Jim Harris, the aging EMT of Metropolis, asked after Clark had dropped a teenager with a broken leg off at the hospital's ambulance entrance. Jim was standing near his ambulance, reading the paper in the light coming from inside the hospital, watching the comings and goings, or lack thereof.

"Of course," Clark said, a little surprised to find conversation in the nearly empty lot. He turned to the familiar face and couldn't help but smile. Jim was in his sixties but was like Perry in that he didn't look like he belonged anywhere else but where he was—Perry without the bullpen wasn't really Perry just like Jim without his ambulance wouldn't be Jim. "How are you?' He asked for lack of something better to say.

"I'm still here," Jim said with a shrug. "Those reporter friends of yours alright?"

"They're hanging in there," Clark said with a chuckle. He didn't want to claim that he and Lois were doing well, as they were both very frustrated with the situation, but they weren't, say, carrying around exploding lilies.

"Good, good; they're good people," Jim nodded, folding his paper and looking around them. "Quiet night in Metropolis."

"Quiet night in the world," Clark amended with a half smile.

An hour later, Clark was back at the farm in his pajama bottoms stretched out on the living room couch watching the news. Normally, he would laze about in the upper atmosphere and listen for calls for help, but he didn't want somebody at the house looking for him downstairs only to find him missing from the property.

He kept the news on for the bulletins to keep informed on the things from the other side of the world he wouldn't hear from Kansas. There wasn't much going on, though. It was the perfect night to schedule a stake out with Lois—something to do, meanwhile the world was fine without Superman. Only things like that never lent themselves to schedules.

He wished he could switch his brain off and get some sleep.

"Clark?" He almost fell off the couch when Lois's voice—her real voice, not the one that had been echoing in his head for the past few hours—interrupted his thoughts.

"Lois?" He squeaked, sitting up and looking over the top of the couch. She was standing at the foot of the stairs in her own flannel pajama pants and a tank top, looking peeved to be awake.

"I thought that was you."

"Er… yeah."

"What's got you up?"

"My mind won't turn off, you?"

"It's so freaking hot in this house," she sighed, making Clark chuckle.

"Yeah. Mom doesn't believe in air conditioning."

"That's ridiculous."

"That's the way she rolls," he smiled, sitting up so she could join him on the couch. They sat in silence for a moment, watching the news again, before Lois spoke again.

"It's so hot!"

"Here," Clark said, standing up and encouraging her to follow him into the kitchen. Curious, she followed. "My mother has two vices: cooking and double fudge chocolate ice cream," he pulled the tub of ice cream out of the freezer and served them each a dish.

"This is perfect," Lois said, smiling as she dug into the cool treat.

"It does the trick," Clark smiled. They lapsed into silence and ate their ice cream.

"So," Lois said after she'd finished, leaning back and looking at Clark across the table. Clark smiled, finished his last bite of ice cream, and pushed his glasses up his nose. "How long do you think we'll be here?"

"Not much longer, hopefully," Clark shrugged. "Seems like there isn't much else to do but sit around and wait for 'them' to make the next move."

"Being in Metropolis would probably get things moving," Lois grunted.

"Being in Metropolis would provide a nice, local target," Clark reminded her. She frowned.

"Maybe, but… we're just so _useless_ here," she sighed in frustration. Clark nodded. "Not that it isn't nice. Jason's really having a good time, I think."

"He and Shelby seem to be having a lot of fun."

"I think the newest thing on his birthday wish list is a dog," Lois shook her head.

"His birthday's coming up, isn't it?" Clark asked, not wanting to admit that he'd been thinking about Jason's upcoming birthday almost as much as he'd been trying to think of what to do about his and Lois's relationship.

"Its tomorrow," Lois sighed, putting her head down on the table for a moment.

"Well, we should do something for him," Clark said, sitting up a little straighter.

"Like what? Have Superman fly his friends in from Metropolis? I can't see that happening," she shook her head.

"No, but I'm assuming he'd like a cake with perhaps a few candles," Clark shrugged. Lois nodded, glancing around the kitchen.

"Are there any 24-7 stores around here? A Wal-Mart or something?" She asked, thinking of the presents she had hidden in her bedroom closet on the top shelf next to the cardboard box full of her old Superman interview tapes.

"There's one about a half an hour down the road," Clark said, thumbing in the direction of the Wal-Mart and holding back a smile at the determination that came to Lois's eyes.

"Get some shoes, Clark," she ordered, standing and putting her empty dish in the sink.

Clark put his own dish in the sink, following her out of the kitchen, stopping in his bedroom for a t-shirt before getting the shoes she had requested.

"Let's go, let's go!" Lois whispered urgently, standing by the door waiting for him to get the keys to the truck. Clark took his time just to peeve her—give her something to bring back the flare behind her eyes that had been missing since they'd left Metropolis.

Lois brainstormed aloud without expecting input from Clark the entire drive to the Wal-Mart.

And that was how they ended up at Wal-Mart at one in the morning in their pajamas shopping for birthday presents for their son.

"Batman or GI Joe?" Clark asked, standing in front of the coloring books with one of each in his hands, looking down to the other end of the aisle where Lois was debating whether or not Jason really needed the box of crayons with a bonus crayon sharpener on the back of the box.

"Batman," she said, choosing the crayons with the sharpener. "And you'd better get a Superman one, too, if they've got it," she sounded as though she was resigned to it more than anything else.

"He doesn't need a crayon sharpener, Lois," Clark rolled his eyes at her. "You just rip off the paper as you go."

"Old school, right?" Lois asked, shaking her head at him but exchanging the box she was holding with the plain box and tossing it in the cart.

They made their way through the toy section, looking at the toys and debating what Jason would enjoy. Both were thinking the same thing as they finished their shopping—they were wishing they'd been able to shop for Jason's birthday presents together in years past, wanting to shop for future birthday gifts together. Those thoughts, their unlikelyhood, put a damper on the event as they added streamers and a 'Happy Birthday!' banner to their cart and made their way to the checkout register.

Lois climbed up into the bed to get the bags to lie flat enough to close the lid on the box.

"That cashier thinks we're both nuts," Clark said, standing at the end of the truck and waiting after he'd handed the bags to her.

"In the middle of nowhere buying birthday presents for a little boy at two in the morning in our pajamas," Lois smiled, finally getting the box closed. "She probably thought we were hopelessly bad parents, forgetting our son's birthday until the very last minute and, probably, leaving him at home alone while we came here."

"Well, she got part of it right," Clark said, holding up a hand to help her down. "We're in the middle of nowhere at two in the morning in our pajamas buying at the very last minute."

"At least we've got something," Lois said, taking his hand and hopping down, landing rough and ending up very close to him.

Clark cleared his throat and prepared to step away but didn't move.

"I don't want to marry Richard," Lois said, her mouth snapping shut as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Their eyes snapped to meet each other, wide, panicked.


	19. Chapter 19

"Don't say that, Lois," Clark whispered. "If you say that…"

"If I say that then maybe we'll both be happy," Lois whispered back, tears on the edge of her voice.

Clark wasn't sure if she was referring to the pair of them, or herself and Richard.

He figured it was the pair of them when she leaned in closer to him and went on her tiptoes, waiting for him to bend and meet her.

He couldn't resist, no matter what his moral compass told him—she was presenting him with the opportunity to right something he'd been thinking about all day. Something she most certainly deserved.

Easily, he stooped slightly to capture her lips with his own, a hand finding its way to cup her cheek. She leaned into him, hands resting on his chest, one snaking up to touch the hair at the back of his neck, holding him closer. Clark's arm wrapped around her waist, all but gathering her into his arms, as he probed deeper, reveling in the taste of her.

Lois groaned into his mouth, nipping at his bottom lip, begging for more.

Clark twisted so that she was sitting on the tailgate, both hands on her waist, bracing her. He concentrated on the block that he had put into her mind that day in the bullpen. It was there, a glaring difference from the rest of her mental presence. It was a wall that didn't ask any questions, didn't let her think about certain aspects of his personality, didn't let her wonder about why she didn't want to know more about her farmboy partner. Basically, it was a wall that kept her personality from asserting itself where he was concerned.

Finding it wasn't the hard part, it was so utterly different from the rest of her consciousness, it was the removal that was difficult. Lois made it easier, though. She was completely open to him, trusting him.

And then it was gone.

There was no mental block, no screen between them keeping her from noticing what he didn't want her to notice.

He felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt in that moment—and more relieved.

Lois pulled back slightly, putting a hand to her head.

"You alright?" Clark asked, still bracing her with hands on her hips, she kept one hand on his shoulder as though she was afraid she'd fall off the tailgate if she let go.

"Yeah, just… dizzy," she shook her head to clear it, smirking at him. "You're pretty good at that, Kent."

He cleared his throat, "Thanks…"

"We probably shouldn't do that again," Lois said, but she wasn't moving, taking in his face as though memorizing every dimple and plain. It was dark. She couldn't see very well in the darkness of the parking lot, but he was silhouetted in the street light, glasses reflecting some of the light and making his eyes glint especially blue.

"Probably not," Clark agreed, looking at her with equal intensity, though he was focused on her eyes. His eyes flickered down to her lips, slightly swolled with his kiss, unable to resist.

Lois tipped her chin up and leaned into him again. He could hear her heart racing in her chest. It made his heart beat a little faster to know it was because he was standing so close.

For the second time that night, against his better judgment, Clark leaned down to meet her lips with his own.

They rode back to the farm in silence, Lois falling asleep halfway along. Clark couldn't decide if it was appropriate for him to be happy or not.

Lois didn't want to marry Richard. She had said that, and then she had kissed_ him_.

- - -

It was one of those dreams where he knew he was dreaming but everything still seemed so real:

Jason lay in bed, glaring out his window. Richard knew that the boy he had raised as his own son was eighteen in this dream world without knowing how he knew. Jason was as long as the bed, a situation Richard could only imagine was less than comfortable. He was well built, only wearing flannel pajama pants and therefore leaving his defined musculature easily in view. Richard had striven for abs like that throughout his twenties, never quite achieving them. Since he was a little boy, Jason had had longish hair. Lois had been trying to talk him into cutting since he'd turned ten, again he somehow knew this within the dream, with some success—now it was loose around his ears, a sloppy mop of the darkest brown on top of his pale head. His eyes were still the brightest blue, as they had been since the day he was born.

"Effing sun," Jason mumbled, rolling over and putting his pillow over his head. Richard was taken aback, not able to imagine the little boy of his waking hours using that sort of language or the deeper, mature voice this older dream-Jason had.

Rolling over didn't seem to help Jason much, as two identical little boys stormed into the room, the door banging against the wall. The twins looked exactly like Jason had when he was three years old. Short, the beginning of a square jaw but with very pinchable cheeks, a pouf of light brown hair that stuck up at odd angles until Lois combed it with cold water, bright blue eyes. These two had freckles, though, like Lois in the summertime when she'd been in the sun for an afternoon but not long enough for a proper tan. It was winter, though, as Jason's window sill was frosted, snow falling outside to add to several feet already on the ground. There was a nice suburban neighborhood outside that wasn't the view from Jason's bedroom at the Riverside house. The twins had matching flannel pajama sets on; Richard couldn't tell which was which when they started moving around.

The boys dove for Jason, ending up on a bare mattress giggling. Richard looked around for the teenager, not realizing where he was until he saw the boys both directing their giggles up at the ceiling. Richard looked up, and there, as though glued to the ceiling, was Jason, his blankets hanging down in a canopy of sorts around him, half glaring half smiling at his little brothers.

"How did you hear us?" One of the boys asked. Even his voice was exactly like Jason's when he was a toddler.

"You two have elephant feet," Jason informed them. They both looked at their feet, eyebrows crinkling familiarly. Richard couldn't place the expression, though. It wasn't his, it wasn't Lois's. Jason did it occassionally, the non-dream Jason, but he wasn't the original owner...

"Daddy says he'll be wight back and you'll make us bwekfast," the first twin said, the one who had spoken earlier.

"An he said you should watch your tongue," the second said, getting a thoughtful look on his face before going cross-eyed.

"What are you doing?" Jason asked, crossing his legs and landing easily in a sitting position looking at his brothers. The boy frowned, uncrossing his eyes to look at Jason.

"How can you watch your tongue? Do you hafta use x-way vision?" Jason laughed, a deep chuckle that Richard, again, found familiar but could not place.

"No, it means I shouldn't use swear words."

"Did you use a sweawerd?" The boy asked, eyes going wide, his twin mimicked the expression without saying anything.

"Yep, and I got caught," Jason winked at them, standing up—easily six feet, Richard guessed—and pulled a t-shirt out of his dresser, herding his brothers down the stairs in front of him. "And now I get breakfast duty."

"Yay!" The twins chorused.

"What? You two hate my cooking."

"Bedder than Mom's," the second twin said. Jason tousled the boy's hair and began poking around the kitchen.

"Why don't you two go give your big sister a wake-up like you gave me and we can put her on toast duty," Jason suggested, putting a kettle on the back burner and turning the heat on. The twins disappeared down the hall they'd come from, tip-toeing and whispering together. Jason chuckled and then did something completely unexpected.

Richard knew the boy was Superman's son. Lois had told him weeks ago. He'd seen him flying earlier in the dream. But making eggs with heat vision? Such an everyday use of such an extraordinary ability floored him. Jason cracked the eggs into the frying pan with one hand and simply looked at the pan; if there hadn't been a ripple of heat between his eyes and the pan Richard wouldn't have known what he was doing. A moment later, with some attention from a spatula, the eggs were bright yellow and fluffy.

Shrieks of laughter from the end of the hall were followed by running footsteps. Jason rolled his eyes. The footsteps suddenly sounded more like running horses than running boys, the steps practically falling on top of each other in their rapidity. Richard saw only two blurs of green, the color of the twins' pajamas, but Jason seemed to have no trouble locking onto the running figures. Setting down the frying pan, Jason scooped up his little brothers out of the blurs of color.

"Not in the house, guys," he admonished, rolling his eyes. "Mom hasn't had her tea yet."

"Oh yeah," they said in unison, exhanging a look.

"It was her fault," the first twin insisted, his twin nodding in agreement.

"Was not," a girl said coming down the hall. She was in flannel pajama bottoms herself and a t-shirt with the styled 'S' Superman logo. She looked exactly as Richard had always suspected Lois's daughter would look: dark, curly hair, pale, clear skin, high cheekbones, a soft jawline that bellied the glint in her eyes that hinted at the inner 'Mad-Dog-Lane.' The only difference, really, were the unearthly blue eyes that weren't quite Richard's.

"Morning," Jason said, tossing a loaf of bread at her.

"Toast, hm?"

Jason nodded.

The two older kids, the sister looked to be about halfway between the twins' age and Jason's, had the kitchen smelling wonderfully like breakfast. The girl sat herself down at the table with a plate and a stick of butter, toasting the bread by squinting at it and then rubbing the stick of butter across it, melting the end with her heat vision. She made half the loaf into a stack of steaming toast before she put the bread and butter away and took the kettle off the back burner and digging around in a drawer for the tea.

"Jason," she finally sighed. He glanced at what she was doing and then the drawer, frowning. His eyes weren't focussed quite the way they should be.

"There's none left in there."

"Is there more in the basement?"

"No," he said after glancing at the floor.

"Dad, you need to bring back more tea!" She announced to the empty den before putting the kettle back on the back burner, setting the flame low.

Richard was still reeling from the superhuman qualities the youngest children had displayed. He'd known Jason wasn't his son, but... He and Lois were trying to work everything out. Why was he having dreams about Lois having more children with Superman? Especially this extremely realistic type of dream. Were they still together in this dream? Was he the daddy where Superman was the father?

That would suck.

Richard looked up and there was Superman, but he wasn't quite Superman. He was flying, about to land on the back patio, but he had blurred as he came over the backyard, changing into flannel pajama bottoms and a plain t-shirt, looking so much like Jason it made Richard's head spin. In his hand was a box of non-caffeinated tea.

"All is well in California again?" Jason asked without turning. Superman sighed.

"Is it too much to ask to have one day to sleep-in a month?" He asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose in an aggravated sort of way that reminded Richard of Clark. The girl chuckled, taking the tea from her father and grabbing the kettle off the stove.

"I made my offer..." Jason said, finally looking up, taking the plates Superman was holding out and using the spatula to divide the eggs into the appropriate proportions on the six plates.

"Your mother wouldn't be able to stand it," Superman said simply, a wry smile playing across his face. "You know that. We've had this discussion, Jason."

Jason shrugged in a defeated sort of way.

"Ask her again after the baby's born," Superman said, pulling out glasses and pouring orange juice. "If she doesn't give in then, you might as well just pick your college and brood in peace. You know she can outlast you in any stubborn test of wills."

"Well... can't you do something?" Jason asked, getting a sly look on his face. "Withold sex or something?"

Superman blushed crimson, spluttering with his mouth hanging open. Lois's laugh tinkled from the doorway, Superman's color deepening; the man actually looked like he'd like to disappear in a sonic boom. Jason was laughing, loud and deep, too, his sister chuckling as she finished with the tea.

"For a guy with four, almost five, kids, you're so easily embarrased, darling," Lois said, smiling widely. She hardly looked a day older than the Lois Richard had gone to sleep in the same room with. She had her usual adorable morning bedhead that told of where Jason's hair got its unruliness. But her eyes were sparkling with happiness like Richard had never seen as she looked over her own private mob of children and the man who had obviously fathered them. She looked to be about eleven months pregnant.

The dream froze in Richard's mind, framing the family. The identical twin boys were wearing identical grins and looking over the back of the couch, their eyes gleaming the way Lois's did after hearing a good joke, though they obviously had no idea what was so funny. The girl was standing on the far right next to the kitchen table, a cup of tea in her hands ready to be handed to her mother. Jason was on the far left, holding the crusty egg pan and laughing openly, his bright blue eyes dancing with humor like Richard had never seen in the Man of Steel's eyes. Lois stood in the center, a hand on her belly, smiling widely, curly hair sticking out at all angles. Superman stood to her right, still blushing furiously, but he'd crossed his arms over his chest and was trying to glareand failing horribly. They were the perfect family like Richard had always dreamed he'd have with Lois. Of course, he'd never expected to have any more (or any, when he thought about it down to the technicalities) with Lois—she had made that much clear right after Jason's birth.

Betrayed. He felt betrayed.

Not only was his self that should've existed within the dream completely forgotten by what had been and should've been his family, but they didn't even seem to care in the least. There were no dark edges to Lois or Jason that could've been left by a fiance and father's passing. Maybe this was what could've happened if Superman had never left? This was what his and Lois's family together would've been like. In that case, Richard would probably have ended up with that blonde he'd met a month after he'd arrived in Metropolis, the one he'd taken to dinner a couple of times before meeting Lois Lane. She'd gone to look for her partner, a man Richard had heard nothing about besides an office-wide joke of 'pulling a Kent' when somebody knocked something over, particularly something expensive, or when they took a long lunch. Lois had never talked about it, never using the phrase herself and turning very sullen when she heard it.

-

Richard woke with a start, sitting up straight on the couch and immediately regretting it. His shoulder throbbed angrily. He took a deep breath to calm himself down and sat still until the almost itchy sensation left his shoulder.

Looking around the guest room he was sharing with Lois at the Kent farm, he realized Lois wasn't actually in the room. Resentment flared in the pit of his stomach for a moment—he was the one recovering from a bullet wound and yet he was the one who'd done the gentlemanly thing and given her the bed and then she didn't even sleep in it. Pushing those thoughts aside, he swung his legs over the side of the couch and got to his feet slowly, listening for her. She wasn't in the bathroom or in with Jason—the boy was soundly asleep, nestled in Clark's childhood bed as though it had always been his. It was Jason's birthday tomorrow and they hadn't planned anything. Jason wouldn't say anything, he knew, but he would be disappointed.

Richard made his way to the top of the stairs, hoping she was just downstairs getting a glass of water, praying she wasn't in Clark's bedroom or something.

Voices made their way to his ears when he was halfway down the staircase. Lois and Clark were awake and whispering loudly at each other. He continued down the stairs.

"No, more to the left... The left Lois."

"This is left!"

"Your right, then."

"I'm always right."

"Ha ha."

"Like this?"

"Yeah, just—" a groan.

"Push harder or it's never going to go in."

"Well I don't want to get it stuck!"

"It's not going to get stuck."

Richard tentatively peered through the archway into the kitchen to see Lois and Clark putting up decorations for a birthday party. Lois was in the process of hanging a 'Happy Birthday!' banner, Clark trying to get a handful of confetti to stay in a small spring-loaded container.

"This package lied," Clark said, glaring at the box the spring-loaded thingamajig had come out of. "Five minutes or less my ass…"

"Clark Kent!" Lois exclaimed in false indignation before laughing. "If I'd known all it would take to get you swearing was a confetti thingamabob and a seven year old's birthday party I'd of dragged you to Jenny and Lola's."

"I was covering the Henderson case when Jenny and Lola turned seven. One of us had to," Clark said distractedly. He made a quick movement with his wrist to get the cap on and the confetti popped out of the can straight into his face. He sighed loudly, not moving until it had all settled. Lois burst out laughing, Richard unable to keep himself from joining in the mirth. Lois and Clark both jumped and looked at the doorway, getting almost identical guilty looks on their faces when they saw him there.

"Richard," Lois said, finally pinning the banner in place and getting down off the chair. "I thought you were asleep."

"Oh, I was…"

"Were we too loud?"

"No, no… actually, I just came down for a glass of water," he lied. He caught a strange look on Clark's face, as though he didn't believe him, but it was gone the moment he noticed it was there.

"The cups are above and to the left of the sink," Clark said, turning his eyes back to the container in his hand, the spring sticking out. Patiently, he pressed the spring back into place and took a second packet of confetti out of the box to refill the containter—_It's like they were planning at least one misfire…_ he thought to himself.

"Oh, Richard," Lois said, pointing to the bags sitting in the corner. "You're good at wrapping. You should wrap those."

"You bought him all new presents? We had an entire closet-full!" Richard walked over to the bags and looked through them. In addition to the coloring supplies, they'd found him a few DVDs, a illustrated book of endangered species, a fleece blanket with Batman's emblem on it, an anthology disc of Veggie Tales' Silly Songs with Larry, a few action figures, two puzzles, and a Superman poster. The poster had actually been Lois's idea—he was Jason's favorite superhero no matter how she felt about him. She knew it would be awkward, but he would love it. Clark had resisted the urge to blush as they added it to their cart.

Richard got to wrapping as the other two finished draping the kitchen in streamers. The three of them worked in a silence that wasn't quite tense.

"Now we just have to keep him out of the kitchen," Lois sighed, looking at their handiwork. It was just past four in the morning, the first rays of sun creeping toward the horizon.

"We should all get to sleep," Richard said, moving to direct Lois up the stairs. She resisted the urge to glare at him, smiling at Clark instead.

"'Night, Clark. Maybe you'll actually sleep in today, eh?"

"Probably," Clark smiled back. "Goodnight."

They went up the stairs, giving each other more personal space than would've been expected of fiancés. Clark sighed, glancing through the celing and seeing that Jason was still deeply asleep. Thankful that he'd played hard with Lana's kids, he fell into his own bed and was asleep seconds after his head hit the pillow.

- - -

"Dad! Dad!" Jason shouted, leaping onto Clark's bed what felt like twenty minutes after he'd fallen asleep. Looking at the clock, Clark saw that it _had_ been twenty minutes. He didn't groan, just rolled over, pulling Jason with him and holding onto him like a teddy bear, making sleepy sounds. "Dad!" Jason giggled, as his 'sleeping' father continued to make goofy snoring noises before everything dissolved into a tickle fight.

Jason howled with laughter, trying to escape and tickle his father back at the same time. Suddenly, Clark was no longer on the bed. Jason stopped, looking around the room with a puzzled look on his face. He checked under the bed and then, with a glint in his eyes, looked up at the ceiling. There was Clark, hovering an inch from the ceiling, lips pressed tight together to keep his laughter in.

"No fair!" Jason said, standing on the bed and jumping to try and reach him. Clark laughed and hovered down to Jason's level, the boy jumping onto his back as soon as he was low enough and sitting there like he was going to get a magic carpet ride. Clark glanced through the walls and saw that the lower level was empty, the only one remotely close to wakefulness upstairs was Martha. Slowly at first, he flew out of his room, changing the height of their drifting as they swooped around the furniture. Before long, Jason was giggling in delight.

They ended up back in Clark's room, Clark tipping sideways and dumping Jason off his back onto the bed before flopping down onto the mattress himself. Jason was breathless, smiling widely. Clark looked over at his son and smiled just as widely.

"Happy Birthday, Jason."

If it was possible, Jason smiled wider.


	20. Chapter 20

**Yes, hello, I'm alive, sorry. Real life came up and was like 'HULLO!! YOU'VE BEEN NEGLECTING ME!' so I figured I better water it and put it in the sun for awhile, even did some pruning. It was excellent. **

**Anyway, this took awhile to get back into, I had to reread about half the story (I winced a lot at the typos and things, I apologize for those-- I'm too lazy to go back and fix them though, I apologize again) after I was hooked into Harry Potter for awhile, reading the books again and actually reading a bit of fanfiction for that as well, some of it was prettygood. Back to the point-- I have the very, very last four chapters of this story written, and now I'm back to this present bit. I know where I'm going with this! yay. that's a good thing. **

**Anyway, thank you for sticking with me. I apologize for the wait.**

"Happy Birthday to you!"

Jason smiled. He'd been wearing a goofy grin all day. Clark had been struggling to get an identical grin off his own face to keep Lois from getting suspicious.

Clark had taken Jason out to the barn to keep him away from the kitchen. They watched the sunrise from Clark's loft and then talked about Jason's hearing. It wasn't overwhelming like it had been before, but his ears were picking up more sounds than a normal human boy's ears should. When the rest of the house woke up, Lois suggested they go into town and have breakfast at the diner. Martha would've been offended if Richard hadn't shown her the decked-out kitchen before Lois made the suggestion. Instead, she begged off on a headache and stayed behind to make Jason a birthday cake. Jason, Richard, Lois, and Clark wandered the town and saw a movie Jason had been talking about before heading back to the house. Jason squealed with delight when he saw the kitchen, hugging everybody. He requested sloppy joes for lunch, and then came the cake.

"Open your presents," Lois suggested, pointing to the presents that had managed to go unnoticed by the excited boy.

He was practically vibrating as he unwrapped the action figures and coloring books, laughing his head off when he spread the Superman poster. Nobody but Clark quite saw the irony in the poster the way Jason did, his eyes glittering with humor.

Jason went to be exhausted that night, falling asleep with a grin still plastered on his face.

The adults sat down at the kitchen table and exhaled in unison. Keeping that grin on Jason's face all day had taken a bit of work.

"I am exhausted," Martha sighed. "We haven't had a birthday party here since…" she trailed off, trying to remember. "'88."

Clark nodded, his lips smiling but his eyes were closed off. The last real party they'd had was Jessica's birthday a month before she'd died.

"You go ahead and go to bed, Martha—we'll clean up down here," Lois volunteered.

"Are you sure…?"

"Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Ma," Clark said, waving his mother toward the stairs. She gave them an appraising look before turning to go.

"Well, alright—don't use anything that'll take the paint off," she gave Clark a pointed lok before going upstairs.

"Why do I sense a good story behind that statement?" Lois asked. Clark wouldn't make eye contact, gathering the dishes and running water in the sink. "Oh, c'mon, Clark."

"Nevermind, Lois," Clark said, keeping his back turned and his focus on the dishes.

"Fine, fine… you know I'll get it out of you eventually," she said with a small, almost flirtatious, smile. Richard frowned, getting a concerned look from his fiancé.

"I'll be right back," he said, shaking his head. "It's time for another pill."

"How are your lungs?" Clark asked after Richard left the room. Lois took a breath and shrugged.

"I haven't had to use my inhaler since we've been here," she said. "I'm assuming that's a good thing."

"Fresh air will do that," Clark smirked over his shoulder at her, tossing her a towel. "Dry these, why don't ya."

She made a face at him but took the towel and started on the dish he handed her.

Richard returned to find them standing nearly hip to hip, washing and drying. Lois stepped away to search the cupboards for a spot to put the plate, finding it on her second try and going back for the next dish.

"Hey, Richard," Lois said, catching him out of the corner of her eye when she put the second dish away. "How's your shoulder?"

"Still there," he replied a little more gruffly than he normally would have. Lois gave him a sharp look and pressed her lips in a thin line before turning around to take another dish from Clark.

- - -

"Do remember what Juliana said about Bill?" Clark asked Lois the night of the eleventh. Richard was sleeping—he'd been doing that a lot, as the doctors had ordered (Lois didn't want to be angry with him, but she suspected it was so he didn't have to spend time with her.)

"Other than that he was married?" Clark nodded. "Um… She described a nice Midwestern guy who'd moved to Metropolis recently with his wife. The wife had no idea about their affair or the illegal activities her husband was organizing… no children. Juliana was originally from Gotham?" She shrugged.

Clark sunk into thought again. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to think about it. He frowned.

"What?" Lois pressed, knowing the look on his face.

"We have to go back to Metropolis," he sighed, glancing at her. She looked excited for a brief moment and then scared, glancing toward the stairs and upwards where Jason was sleeping.

"What about the threats?"

"We'll just be careful which flowers we sign for," Clark joked, getting a hard look. He almost smiled—motherhood really had changed Lois. "I could talk to my mother and see if she'd be comfortable with Richard and Jason staying here," he suggested. "Richard will be able to heal and Jason will be safe."

Lois frowned for a moment. "Richard's not going to like being left behind."

"Jason will have a familiar face here—and Richard really does need to take it easy," Clark said, frowning with his eyes. He'd taken a look at the other man's shoulder earlier in the week—it was healing well, all things considered, but it needed him to be still.

Lois frowned as well, but it was a determined sort of frown.

"What have you thought of?" She asked, knowing he had to have a really good lead in mind to risk letting her go back to Metropolis.

"It's a wacky theory, I don't know if it's really all that realistic, but—it all fits," he frowned. He wasn't looking at her, focused on the blank screen of the TV. Lois stayed quiet, waiting for him to sort things through in his brain. "Okay… Bill Ganelon and his wife Terry, from Smallville. He'd have the Midwestern morals Juliana talked about. Terry was always a bit oblivious, if you ask me. And she loved him more than he deserved—mooned over him all through high school, even _I_ thought it was ridiculous—so she'd look in the other direction if she thought something was going on. Bill had a drug problem in high school, too. He was a few years older than me. It's a small town, though, and if somebody's doing drugs _everybody_ knows about it. Except for when he was on them. Nobody noticed he was leaving town every weekend to buy pot, not to look for work. They sent him away to rehab my senior year and he came back right before I left and got back together with Terry," he frowned. "He wouldn't consider himself above joinging the Metroplis crime circuit if opportunity knocked. Maybe it came by way of Juliana. She was originally from Gotham, dated the biggest crime lord of the decade's son. She'd know who to contact in Gotham if she wanted back in—or they'd know how to get to her if they were trying to use her to get to somebody else…"

"Isn't that a bit of a stretch?"

"Yeah," Clark shrugged. "But it's something new. The police have been running into walls on all fronts, the leads are dried up. Superman hasn't found anything, he's even talked Batman into helping, scouring Gotham for the source of the posters and kryptonite."

Lois bit her lip and sighed. "I'll schedule our flight… then I'll talk to Richard in the morning about it—less time for him to protest."

"I thought you were trying to fix things between the two of you," Clark said, looking her in the eye and keeping his face unreadable. She shook her head.

"I'm done trying, Clark. I'm sure the only reason he hasn't asked for the ring back is because he doesn't want to offend your mother's traditional principles."

- - -

Twelve hours later, Lois and Clark were on a plane to Metropolis. Richard had reluctantly given in to Lois's proposal. Jason was more than happy to stay at the farm for a little extra time, though he hated to see his mother go.

Clark was highly uncomfortable in the contained space despite their first class seats. He was used to being in complete control of flight and _hated_ turbulence. Lois laughed at him, taking the window seat and remarking on his fear of heights before falling asleep for the duration of the flight.

They landed at the Metropolis airport without much to-do, gathered their bags, and checked in at a motel not too far from the _Planet_. They were sure their places of residence were being watched—if not by bounty hunters of some sort then by paparazzi—as the _Planet_ was sure to be, but at least they could feel a little safer when they were asleep.

'Mr. and Mrs. Thomson' dropped their bags off in their room and located the phone book. Clark patiently flipped through page after page until he found the Ganelon's address and phone number. Lois paced.

They took a taxi to the Ganelons' street and stood outside the apartment building while Clark called the phone number that had been listed.

"Terry?" He asked when a woman anwered.

"Yes, who's this?"

"This is Clark, Clark Kent, from Smallville."

"Clark! Hi. What's going on? Word has it you disappeared."

"Yeah, well, I kinda did," Clark said, shifting uncomfortably. "Look, do you think it would be okay to meet with you to talk sometime? I could really use your help."

"Uh… sure, Clark, sure. Where did you have in mind? Are you still in Metropolis?"

"I'm close enough that I'd be able to make it anywhere you suggested," he said warily.

"Alright, do you know the Lounge on 109th?"

"The bar?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, I haven't been in there, but I've been past it…"

"How does there work?"

"That would be fine. How soon can you meet me?"

"I can leave now. It would just take me ten minutes-or-so."

"Sounds good," Clark said, glancing through the layers of the apartment complex to see Mrs. Ganelon grabbing her jacket and purse as she hung up. She looked nervous. He glanced at Lois.

"She didn't even ask _why_ I would think to contact her for help on anything," he observed, frowning at his partner. She smirked back at him, eyes sparkling back with their old fire.

"I think we might be on to something here, Kent," she said, looking around. "Did you want to actually meet her at the Lounge or intercept her when she comes out of the building?"

"Let's wait for her outside the Lounge and talk while we walk," he suggested. "We don't know what she knows or who's watching her."

Lois nodded.

Their cab pulled away from the curb just as Terry came out of her building.

- - -

They were waiting for Terry in front of the Lounge when her cab pulled up. She gave them a wary look and seemed to be trying to decide whether she could make up an excuse for leaving without talking to them.

"Hello, Terry," Clark said, shaking her hand. She made a nervous face.

"Hello, Clark."

"Er, this is my partner, Lois Lane," he introduced; Terry nodded and shook Lois's hand as well. "Let's walk, shall we?" He suggested. Terry looked relieved and panicked at the same time.

"Oh, alright…"

They walked for about a block before she began speaking, surprising both the reporters.

"At first I thought he was just having an affair… but then I found some papers. Bill was never secretive, and then he was hiding things from me," she shook her head. "He hasn't been home since the middle of April. I just thought he'd left me, I didn't know it had anything to do with those missing kids until his _girlfriend_ showed up here with that Petey boy."

"Why didn't you bring this to the police?" Lois asked, her tape recorder out between them.

"Bill showed up less than an hour after that _woman_ left. He's had guys watching me since then."

"Why are you talking to us now?"

"They aren't watching me. I haven't seen them all week."

"That doesn't mean they're not still watching you," Lois said, glancing over her shoulder. Clark extended his hearing, searching for footsteps keeping pace with them or the like.

"I don't think they're in Metropolis anymore."

"What makes you think that?" Lois asked.

"Bill made a point of wandering by every few days to make sure I knew he was still watching; I haven't seen him for almost two weeks, then his cronies disappeared…" she shrugged. She had a discordant air of calm about ther, as though she had separated herself from the situation weeks ago. "I was waiting for somebody to start asking me questions."

They continued walking, Lois and Clark pressing Terry for information. She didn't know much about her husband's current whereabouts or much detail of his crimes, but she knew plenty of little things that they had been looking for over the past month.

Bill had rented storage space sixteen, locker three at the warehouse, Terry had the papers to prove it, sometime in the middle of April. He had had her rent U-Hauls for him in the middle of June. He brought along a thug and a gun to convince her to do so without fuss. They'd watched her through June and into July, and then disappeared.

Lois and Clark brought Terry to the police station. They were swarmed immediately by Henderson, Krenske, and the detectives they'd put in charge of the investigation. Terry was brought into a small room in back to make her official statement and answer a multitude of questions, Lois and Clark pulled into Henderson's office to relay what she'd told them and how they'd come to think to contact her.

"So basically you followed a wild hunch that came upon you after sitting in middle-of-nowhere, Kansas for a week, and it actually played out," Henderson said, disbelieving, looking at Clark. The taller man shifted uneasily and confirmed the statement. "Well, we _are_ lucky, aren't we?" Henderson chuckled, looking over the papers he had in front of him.

- - -

Finding Bill Ganelon was easier said than done, but it was easier than trying to put handcuffs on a shadow without a name. They searched the Ganelon's apartment for clues Terry might've missed but didn't come up with anything—Bill had left most of his clothes in the closet, but he'd cleared out the desk he kept in the spare bedroom. His phone records were subpoenaed, but if he had had any contact with the Boss and/or Lex Luthor or anybody else, it had been done on a different phone. His credit cards were frozen as well, but it turned out that he'd all but cleared out his bank account—luckily he and Terry had never combined their bank accounts for one reason or another—shortly after the New Krypton Fiasco.

"If you find him, tell him I want a divorce," Terry said before leaving the station, hailing a cab and going to pack up what she needed from the apartment before going to stay at a hotel.

Bill's picture was brought to the apartment complex Juliana lived in before everything, and showed around. A few of her neighbors and her landlord recognized his face as the nice gentleman that had tried to get her into treatment. They'd assumed he had been successful when Juliana wasn't seen around for awhile, but then the landlord had thrown her out when she'd spent all of her money on drugs instead of rent.

- - -

Lois and Clark returned to their hotel room, Clark performing a quick search of the building and the surrounding streets with his x-ray vision while Lois was looking the other way, making sure nobody had figured out who they were and sent flowers.

"Well, that was certainly worth walking all around town all afternoon," Lois said, sitting down on the bed heavily and kicking off her pumps. Clark gave her a pitying look as she winced and rubbed at her blistered feet. "I should know by now to wear better shoes when I pound the pavement with you," she smirked up at him and Clark just shrugged.

Clark sat at the tiny table in the corner and turned on his laptop, catching the tape recorder Lois tossed him and preparing to begin the outline Henderson had grudgingly given them permission to start working on—they weren't allowed to mention it to Perry until he gave them the go-ahead. Henderson had also asked them to stay out of the public eye for the remainder of the week, until they testified before the Grand Jury, the beginning of Joe's trial.

"What's the matter, Clark?" Lois aked him several hours later. The article was all but complete, making their inability to print it all the more frustrating.

"Nothing, really—just thinking. I graduated two years after Bill. Terry, too. It's a small town," she nodded, giving him a knowing and exasperated look, making him chuckle. "I never imagined I'd be dealing with him, of all people, when it came to these kidnappings."

"Can you ever really know people?" Lois asked, thinking of what Bruce Wayne had hinted at when it came to Clark, and of Superman. Clark gave her a searching look with sadness behind his eyes that she couldn't place.

"You can, but they change as soon as you really figure them out," he couldn't help but smirk at that, thinking of how motherhood had changed Lois. She gave him a matching searching look but glanced away out the window.

"So what do we do now?" Lois asked, looking over their article again, or what she could see of it on Clark's screen.

"I thought I'd run around the corner and get some Chinese," Clark offered.

"I should probably call Lucy," Lois sighed, she'd been getting emails from her little sister all week, asking where she was and if she was alright.

"Alright; I'll be back with food," Clark said, grabbing his jacket and rushing out of the room. She gave the door a strange look and pulled her cell phone out of her purse.

Clark called in their usual order to the take-out place around the corner before spinning into the Suit and taking off.

A sonic boom later he was over Gotham, cell phone pressed to his ear as he searched the alleys for Ganelon or his U-Hauls or anything that could be related to the kidnappings.

"Bruce Wayne," Bruce answered, sounding exhausted.

"It's Clark," Clark said, glancing toward Wayne Tower, where Bruce was in the middle of his usual work day. His friend stood a little straighter, his brow creasing with worry.

"Clark. I wasn't expecting to hear from you."

"Yeah, everybody's fine—I have good news," he moved farther down the shoreline and continued to search the dock-area thoroughly. "Bill Ganelon is our kidnapper; he's actually from Smallville, of all places. He graduated two years ahead of me. His wife finally came forward."

"You think he moved to Gotham?"

"That's where all the posters are."

"You checking on things?"

"Yeah, nothing's sticking out, though."

"I know the streets better than you. I'll check on it tonight."

Clark hung up and hid his phone on his belt again, peering into a warehouse and finding nothing other than a strange collection of couches.


	21. Chapter 21

Bruce made his way from shadow to shadow, eyes always moving behind the cowl. He was outside the restaurant that had once been Carmine Falcone's base of operations. It was all but closed down now—only the meager legitimate front remaining since the downfall of the crime lord so many years ago. Members of the present day crime syndicate ate there occasionally for old time's sake, which was why Bruce was lurking outside of it, in the shadows.

Lex Luthor had always had that flamboyantly romantic, or perhaps nostalgic, streak and was stupid enough to show his face at a place like Falcone's old 'hideout.' Clark had once expressed surprise that Luthor hadn't made Chicago his base for its rich crime-lord history.

Fourty-five minutes later, though, and no sign of the bald madman. Maybe not so stupid after all.

Bill Ganelon, though, was, to his knowledge, new to the 'wanted man' thing.

Bruce checked the picture Clark had dropped off again, even though he knew the lines of the man's face well enough by now.

Bill Ganelon was hardly three years older than Clark, but he'd spent the majority of his adult life in the sun on a tractor, leaving him well-tanned and more wrinkled around the eyes than a city-slicker his age. Cold brown eyes, a long nose, thin lips, and thinning brown hair that was graying at the temples and beginning to recede into baldness. Not particularly attractive, nor particularly grotesque. An average-looking man who had led an average life until he'd moved to Metropolis.

The bat-man's patience was just beginning to wane when a man of average height and build in jeans and cowboy boots stepped out of the restaurant. There was absolutely nothing interesting about him except for the fact that he was the one Bruce had been waiting for. His first impulse was to snatch him up, sedate him, and keep him in the Bat Cave until Clark arrived to bring him to Metropolis; however, Ganelon was more valuable loose, at the moment. With any luck, he could be followed to a base of operations where Luthor was hiding out or—or with any luck _and_—the missing children were being held.

- - -

Jimmy sat in the second conference room, the smaller one that he had taken over to go through the old photos Perry wanted to be put into photo albums for the Anniversary Gala—the fiftieth anniversary of the _Planet_ being housed in the landmark building. The paper was older than dirt, the landmark status, the globe and whatnot, was only half a century old. They were celebrating at the traditional Christmas party. They rented out a huge ballroom space downtown, put on ridiculously expensive clothes, ate and drank champagne and tiny appetizers, and generally had a good time.

It was June, though, and the party wasn't until December. Yet Jimmy sat in his conference room, every inch of table covered in old photos, both black-and-white and color. He'd pulled some of them out of the morgue, from back before anybody currently in the _Planet_'s employ would possibly remember, but most of them were from his personal archives—he wasn't the photo editor, nor was he the most senior photographer, but he had the most photos from around the bullpen, as he was the one that stuck around, which was mostly because he was not only a photographer, but the go-fer.

"Are you sure I can't get at least a couple of interns?" he asked Perry, again, but the editor merely grinned at him and shut the door, again.

Jimmy looked down at his work again. The chairs were stacked with empty photo albums; there was a pile of sticker-numbers for labeling completed albums with the appropriate years on one corner of the table. For the most part, he'd been able to sort the photos by year, but most of it was guess-work. He sat in the one chair that was clear of empty albums and began.

-

Perry smirked to himself looking into the spare conference room—it was too small for proper staff meetings and was usually only used for the section editor gatherings, but the section editors could make due with a larger space so that Jimmy could properly organize all those damn photos. Jimmy had been working on the albums for the better part of the week, organizing and labeling photos, sticking them in albums by year and stacking the completed albums off to the side. He would've been worried about losing one of his best photographers to such an intern-worthy task, but Jimmy knew almost everybody in the photos by face and didn't constantly bother the rest of the office with questions after this or that person, which made it worth it. Besides, Jimmy was best at capturing Superman on film, and Superman had made himself scarce lately.

That disappearance concerned the editor-in-chief, but he was determined not to think about it. He had enough to worry about without concerning himself with an extraterrestrial being that could take care of himself.

Worries such as the upcoming return of Lois and Clark to the bullpen. They were due to check in that evening, late, after most of the staff had gone home. They wouldn't be returning publicly until their latest breakthrough was published in a few days—which meant the editor-in-chief had a countdown going in his head to stress over. Lois, he was sure, was running out of patience. It was like the Henderson case all over again—long and drawn out, involving less-than-savory characters that would willingly take out a reporter or two for breaking the case wide-open. Perry was a bit offended Lane and Kent hadn't at least been nominated for the Pulitzer for that bit of investigative brilliance, but they'd won _something_ for it, he couldn't remember what. It had satisfied them, though, and then their personal lives had blown up. He'd sent them on that Niagara Falls bit as a well-deserved vacation and it had ended up breaking up the team. The criminal Kryptonians had tried to take over the world, Lane and Kent had disappeared for a weekend, Lane had reappeared completely different, Superman had driven the Kryptonians away, Lois had done another 180, Kent had been gone a few weeks later. Lois had gotten together with Richard, she'd turned up pregnant…

Perry sighed. He didn't like thinking about that segment of time. At all. It seemed all the troubles in Lois' life in particular stemmed from that trip to Niagara Falls, and _he'd_ been the one to send her on the trip.

Another sigh. He realized he was staring at Lois' desk and blinked. It was odd to see her desk empty—it hadn't been empty since her maternity leave, and even then she'd been popping into the bullpen every few days as though she didn't believe it would still be there when she got back.

- - -

Clark was pacing and it was driving Lois nuts.

"Why don't you just call him?" she asked for the fiftieth time at least. He didn't even pause in his pacing, as though he hadn't even heard her, but she knew he had. She scowled at him. "Earth to Clark? Hello?"

"He'll call when he knows for sure, Lois," he snapped back, finally answering her. She sighed and flopped back on the bed.

She was going stir-crazy sitting in their hotel room without a break since they'd arrived. The action was in Gotham and that's where she wanted to go, but Clark wouldn't hear of it. He said they were due in the bullpen that evening to make a report to Perry, they couldn't possibly leave town. He said it was too dangerous. He said he had Bruce Wayne pulling the appropriate strings anyways.

Lois didn't care if they went to Gotham just to sit in Bruce's over-the-top manor; at least she'd be closer to the action while she sat around and waited impatiently.

Clark's cell phone finally rang, vibrated rather, skittering noisily on the little table.

- - -

"Dad," Richard said, feeling a bit of the tension that had been cramping the muscles between his shoulder blades for the past few weeks ebb away.

"Richard," the tone in his father's voice was entirely tense, nothing like Martha Kent's despite her awareness of the situation. "How was your flight?"

"Fine," Richard shrugged with his good arm and tried to smile reassuringly. It came out as more of a grimace.

"Dad," Jason whined, tugging at the hem of his shirt until Richard looked down at him. The little boy was carrying his big backpack on his back with everything he'd taken to Kansas shoved inside. Richard had his own pull-behind suitcase with his things in it. "What's going on?"

"It's okay, Jason. Let's just go to Grandpa's house, alright?"

"Mom and Uncle Clark said to stay at the farm with Mrs. Martha."

Richard closed his eyes and counted to ten quickly in his head. Jason had been pushing that point since he'd booked their flight to Gotham. At first it had been because he hadn't wanted to leave the goat or the dog, but then, when it became apparent they were really leaving, it was because Mrs. Martha would be lonely without them or he'd miss the dog, then it had progressed to 'Mom and Uncle Clark said' and Richard had reached new levels of annoyance.

He had booked the first flight to Gotham the morning after Lois and Clark had left for Metropolis. Mrs. Kent hadn't protested, but he was sure it was because she felt it wasn't her place. Jason had given her a pleading look and her only half enthusiastic comforts had served to increase his whining.

"I'm parked right in the first lot," Richard's father, Thomas White, said, thumbing back over his shoulder and taking Richard's bag. "It's not far."

As far as grandfathers went, Thomas White wasn't the greatest. His wife had died when Richard was young, leaving him to raise their boy alone. He'd spent most of Richard's childhood wishing his wife was there for various landmarks events, and was spending Jason's childhood the same way. It was rather depressing, really. Richard had gotten over the lackluster childhood years ago and vowed to make his son's better—of course, that had become more difficult when he'd discovered Jason wasn't his, though he still loved him just as well.

He told himself he just needed time.

- - -

Lois felt that it was odd to be pulling into the driveway of 312 Riverside Drive. After so long away, the house was somehow different. It was empty, to be sure, but it just seemed strange in itself. Like it was part of somebody else's life.

She unlocked the front door and stepped into the entryway. Boots and jackets were just as they'd been left, if slightly disturbed—Metropolis P.D. had been through everything before she'd been allowed to return home. For her own safety, of course.

The fridge was empty, but she'd expected that.

Every room was empty, and though she'd expected _that_ it was the strangest thing of all.

It was in the kitchen that she finally broke down.

Bill Ganelon was dangling in front of them like the proverbial carrot on a string to be chased, Richard had taken Jason and flown to Gotham without a word to her, and she hadn't been able to have a proper conversation with Clark since they'd checked in at the bullpen after Batman himself had called his cell phone to inform them Ganelon had disappeared into a tunnel system he hadn't been aware of in the Narrows.

She'd even had a conversation with Superman after he'd parlayed with Batman in Gotham—he'd been more frustrated than she'd ever seen him. The tunnels were lead-lined and neither superhero was dumb enough to venture down and explore the tunnels. The warrant had to be granted through Gotham P.D., so it would take awhile at best.

After ten minutes sitting with her forehead on the kitchen table, she called Lucy's house, still with her forehead on the table. She was miserable and she needed to talk to her sister.

"Troupe household, Lola speaking," Lola trilled. Lois had to blink a few times before she was able to speak—the twins were thirteen, teenagers; she hadn't seen them in far too long.

"Lola, hi; it's Aunt Lois," Lois said. Lola said nothing, Lois politely assumed the girl was nodding or some other form of silent acknowledgement. "Is your mom there?"

"Yeah… MOM, PHONE!"

Lois held the phone away from her ear and wondered if Superman felt the same way when somebody whispered in his ear.

"Hello?"

"Luce."

"What's the matter?"

"How do you know something's the matter?"

"Because I'm your sister," Lucy replied. Lois could hear her younger sister ushering children away with orders not to disturb her and the sound of the den door sliding shut. "Now what's going on?"

"I have no idea," Lois sighed, opening her eyes to stair at the grain of the table as she proceeded to spill her heart to Lucy. Everything big and small came out—the Coffee Shoppe had been out of hazelnut creamers when she'd desperately needed them when she'd popped in for a cup to go, the tension between her and Clark, Richard disappearing off to Gotham with Jason even though he _knew _it was nearly as dangerous as being in Metropolis (what stung even more was that she had been notified via Clark when his mother had called to let him know, not Richard letting _her_ know he was taking Jason to Gotham), Perry's inability to select interns that understood the most basic instructions…

In true Lane fashion, Lucy pulled out all the stops. She put Ron in charge of the kids the moment he arrived home, bought a bottle of something cheap and a lot of ice cream, and sat Lois down on the couch.

"Now," she said—by this time it was nearly seven o'clock and Lois had managed to work herself into a bit of a depression that had her sister thoroughly concerned. "Start at the beginning. Don't leave anything out. I'm here to help."

For a moment, Lois considered telling Lucy that Jason was Superman's son, but decided against it. Instead, she started with a brief history of her partnership with Clark Kent that escalated into a rant about men in general and ended in lamentations about the complicated state of her life and relationships.

- - -

Superman flew back to Metropolis from Gotham after a long conversation with Bruce about the mysterious tunnels Ganelon had betrayed. They needed a way in, preferably _before_ the warrant went through to head off those inside who would be escaping when someone inside the judge's office gave them an early warning.

They hadn't come up with anything. It was another thing to be frustrated about.

He sank back below the cloud cover as he came upon Metropolis—one of his favorite views even when it was so dreadfully overcast, big gray clouds heavy with condensation barring the cityscape.

For the second time in recent history, Perry White was standing on the roof of the _Daily Planet_ in Lois's usual spot. Or what had been her usual spot before he'd gone to Krypton.

Perry looked up at Superman flew overhead, looking both a little surprised and a little relieved. It was an odd look to see on his boss's face.

"Evening, Chief," Clark said as he soared past, slowing down just enough so that if Perry were to say anything, he'd be able to pause for a moment of conversation. Perry just sort of nodded belatedly, and Clark flew on.


	22. Chapter 22

Clark was levitating somewhere in the vaulted area of his living room's ceiling, frustrated with the general state of his life. He'd finished his usual rounds of the planet earlier in the evening and found himself without anything else to do—Perry hadn't assigned any new stories, wanting to keep them out of the public eye even though Henderson had agreed with Lois' argument that they might as well return to their homes and just be careful.

With a frown firmly fixed on his face he looked out his wall of windows, wondering if there was something wrong with him, wanting something to happen in the streets so that he would have something to do, somebody to rescue; _anything _to break up the tense quiet.

Tense and awkward were the two most fitting words that could describe his life. Tense for his relationship with Lois as Superman; awkward for his relationship with Lois as Clark, particularly when they were alone, which was increasingly common.

Sighing, he dropped back to the floor and flicked on the TV.

There was nothing on.

His boredom was interrupted by a knock at the door. He was greatful for the distraction, but he hoped it wasn't Mrs. McMillon needing another cup of sugar.

"Hey."

It was Lois instead.

"Hey," his heartrate shot up. She had come to visit him? Alone? At ten o'clock at night? "What's going on?"

They'd spent a few days alone together in a hotel room, but their energies had been focused on compiling their notes of recent events, writing out a proper article with the parts of the information Henderson and Gordon had agreed was appropriate (though the two officers had never actually talked to each other) for the public to be aware of at the moment. The information they weren't allowed to use was revised and tidied in their unique shorthand notes, the info from Bruce's files was added as well for future use.

All in all, they'd avoided contact and non-business-pertinent conversation rather well.

Lois shrugged and held up a big bag from Bed, Bath and Beyond. "I brought you an apartment-warming gift."

"I've been here for, what, five months…?" he said, holding the door open for her to pass inside anyway.

"I know; awful of me to wait so long, huh?" she asked, pulling a slip-cover in a plastic package out of the bag and then the package, unfurling it over his old brown sofa. Clark closed the door and watched as she adjusted it, pulling here, buttoning there. In no time at all, his couch was green; he smiled to himself.

"Did you have to get the green one?" he asked, looking at the couch. It actually looked quite good, the color a bold forest green that somehow grounded the rest of the apartment and clashed magnificently as well.

"I was going to get the cream one to match your walls, but," she smirked shaking her head at him, "you and white don't play well together… and the brown was just too bland."

"I like brown," Clark commented, indicating the original color of the couch and his brown tweed suit in the same gesture.

"I noticed," Lois said, indicating the brown hardwood floors and the dark wood of the bookcases in her gesture. Clark raised an eyebrow. With nothing left to say, the awkwardness that had grown between them came back full-force. Lois sighed and sat down on the newly-covered couch. Clark, after a moment's hesitation, joined her.

For awhile, they just sat there. There was a great view of the cityscape in the moonlight out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Unfortunately, neither of them felt it would be appropriate to say something about that fact, as they'd moved past that sort of idle conversation years ago. Once upon a time, silences had been comfortable, even common.

"So what now?" Lois finally asked when the silence had become too awkward to bear.

"I have no idea," Clark sighed, leaning back into the sofa and squeezing his eyes shut, trying not to think. He certainly knew what he _wanted_ to happen, what her fluttering heartbeat suggested she was either anticipateing or dreading would happen as well.

"Well, I'd better get going," Lois said suddenly, jumping to her feet and crumpling the bag into a little ball and shoving the little ball into her purse.

"Right," Clark said, standing as well and seeing her to the door. There was relief in the gesture, but he wanted to kick himself. Couldn't he think of something to talk about? Anything? They worked together for chrissakes, there had to be _something_.

Coffee. He could offer her coffee…

"Goodnight, then, Clark. Don't you dare take that slip cover off," she instructed, jabbing a finger into his chest. She immediately decided that was a mistake, as she could feel just how warm he was. Enticing.

Lois turned and made her way the rest of the way across the room to the door, giving him a weird look. He'd seen the look before; it didn't spell anything good for those not being completely honest. He promptly tripped over absolutely nothing. To his surprise, when he looked up she was smiling at him fondly.

"I won't," he said, holding up his right hand as he righted himself on his feet. "Scout's honor. I'm too lazy anyway, you know."

"I know," she smirked, turning to the door again.

Every particle in his body was screaming at him to stop her from leaving, to just walk up behind her and hold the door shut when she tried to open it and go out. Instead, he watched in silence as she left without looking back again.

His libido was trying to kill him from within.

**A/N: Sorry this is so short and a bit strung together and altogether more summary than anything else (this is including that other chapter I just posted, because they were supposed to be one slightly larger chapter but the computer wasn't cooperating). It's setting up the next bits, I promise—it's been a bit slow coming, and by slow I mean I know exactly what I want to get into this section and no idea how to get it in there (if that makes any sense). And another apology for it being such awhile between updates recently—summer's just started so my internet access is a bit sketchy (my laptop has no internet when I'm not at school, so I have to use my zip drive and get it to a computer with access, but the home computer doesn't like my zip drive so I have to take it to the library. Generally a bit of a hassle), and I spent the past ten days-or-so in China (which was AWESOME) so I haven't exactly been writing… Anyway. I hope you enjoyed this short segment; I've got most of the next one mostly written, I just want to flush it out a bit more before I post it… so it'll be sooner rather than later :)**


	23. Chapter 23

Chris Henderson sat at the computer waiting for a match on the fingerprints he'd just uploaded into the system

Chris Henderson sat at the computer waiting for a match on the fingerprints he'd just uploaded into the system. He'd run the first ring-finger print and come up dry—but he hadn't been too hopeful as there was no Bill Ganelon, or William Ganelon, in any database he'd searched. The guy had no record. They had a yearbook picture from Smallville High and a more recent photo from his wife, but nothing else. No criminal record, no fingerprints.

Rather frustrating, really. Henderson figured he was already well into overtime, as it was nearing midnight, but he didn't really care. He had nothing better to do, as his wife had long ago accepted that he would have 'one of those cases' every now and again that drove him to long bouts of overtime. The compensation for that was the accumulated time off and extra pay, meaning they could take luxurious vacations at the destination of her choice once or twice a year.

The computer beeped and Henderson came out of his thoughts, blinking at the screen.

The second set of prints, an index finger and a thumb print, belonged to Clark Kent.

"You're not serious," he told the computer, blinking at the results. The screen still told him it was a match and he couldn't deny it.

_But when would Kent have touched these tags?_ He wondered to himself. He didn't believe for a second that Clark 'Smallville' Kent had gotten his prints on the tags delivered by Batman via Superman because he was the one that had put them on the kryptonite samples. He was too busy investigating with Lane in Metropolis, then hiding out in Smallville, then breaking the case wide open… _That was a lucky leap, though…_

Henderson shook his head as though he were trying to dislodge his thoughts.

"Not possible," he told the computer, but the image on the monitor didn't change.

Henderson called up Clark's online _Planet_ profile and stared at it for awhile. It read like a baseball card and was complete with the picture that was on his press pass, only in color and slightly larger. It was typical Clark Kent: cheesy grin, thick glasses blurring his bright eyes slightly, bad tie visible at the bottom of the frame as well as a charcoal suit, blackest of black hair carefully parted on one side yet still a bit unruly. Henderson didn't believe for one moment that the man in that photo would kidnap children, kill them.

His eyes were drawn to the 'statistics' listed for Clark—6'4", 225lbs, a veteran of the _Planet_'s city beat for four years with Lois Lane recently back from a five year sabbatical…

The synapses in Henderson's brain began flashing rapidly.

Still on the _Daily Planet_'s website, he searched the archives of the most popular articles and easily found the one he was looking for—"I Spent the Night with Superman," by Lois Lane—and skimmed it for probably the fiftieth time in his life. And there it was, Superman's baseball card statistics. 6'4", 225lbs, able to fly, impenetrable skin, heat vision, freezing breath… appeared in April of 1998 and seemed to be based out of Metropolis until he left in late October, 2002. He made his first appearance since his disappearance on March 21, 2007—the same day Clark Kent returned to the _Daily Planet_.

Henderson put the photo of Superman that accompanied the article next to the press pass photo of Clark Kent. On the computer he was using, there wasn't the software to edit out the glasses or add them onto a face, but he didn't need to.

He leaned back in his chair, hands gripping the arms rather hard to make sure something was concrete and real in the crazy situation.

_Clark Kent is Superman?_

Henderson closed out of the _Planet_ cite and, after a moment's hesitation, deleted the search he'd performed and put a security block on Clark Kent's information—should anybody try to access it, he would know; they wouldn't be able to see anything without his authorization, either.

Henderson took a long drive around Metropolis before he went home.

_Clark Kent is Superman!_

- - -

Forty-five minutes after Lois had left, Clark found himself in his pajamas standing besides the floor-to-ceiling windows in his living area, looking out at the city below. The night life was coming alive, he could hear it. There were no miscreants about just yet, though, leaving him, once again, rather bored. He wondered how people who didn't have a superhero alter-ego used up all their spare time—of course, he realized, people without superhero alter-egos didn't have superhero talents like super-speed that made everyday activities so quick.

A bold knock at his door startled him out of his observation. He looked through the door and was more than surprised to see Lois standing there again, gripping her purse tightly and looking determined, yet her racing heartbeat gave her away.

Gathering his own nerves, he crossed the room and opened the door.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" she asked, looking as though she was honestly worried that she'd woken him.

"No. I was just, y'know, um… I just finished brushing my teeth?"

"Oh," her eyes unwittingly glanced down at his lips upon mention of the teeth they concealed. Clark shifted a bit uncomfortably as her eyes lingered, then moved away and opened the door wider so that she could enter. Hesitating only a second, Lois crossed the threshold. Clark closed the door behind her and she slipped her shoes off, arranging them meticulously next to his beside the door with her toe. Her flats looked tiny compaired to his shoes.

"What are we doing, Lois?" he asked, exhaling softly. He was still facing the door, his hand beside the lock.

She stared at his back, broad shoulders concealed in the same plain white t-shirt he'd worn to sleep in at the farm, same flannel plaid sleeping pants, bare feet. He looked so different when he was relaxed—it was amazing what a change of clothes did for him.

"I don't know," she said at long last, biting her thumb nail, turning to look out the tall windows into the darkness—only a single lamp was on beside the couch, making the room quite dark but allowing those inside to look out without being faced only by reflections of within.

Another silence, this one not so weighted.

Finally, Lois spoke, turning around again and facing him, finding him watching her carefully with a look on his face she wasn't sure she'd seen before. "Lucy put me through a few paces this afternoon," she began. Clark almost smirked, but checked himself. "She got me thinking about a few things."

"Things that made you show up at my apartment what could be considered rather late?" he was smirking but Lois looked a bit sheepish. "Twice?"

"Yeah… you'll notice I didn't really get around to this bit of conversation last time," she bit her lip, now drawing Clark's attention to her lips.

"Let's sit down," Clark suggested, snapping himself out of it. Lois seemed to have run out of steam even though she was only beginning to get around to her point. She hurried over to the sofa and sat on one edge, picking up a trinket from Clark's travels off of the coffee table.

Slowly, Clark joined her on the couch and settled on the other end, watching her fiddle with the trinket until she realized he was watching and replaced it on the table.

"Why the hell is life so complicated, anyways?" she suddenly burst out, flopping back onto the couch and pressing her palms to her eyes.

"Oh, sweetheart," Clark heard himself sigh, drawing her into his arms and holding onto her. She wasn't crying, but she was quite miserable.

- - -

_Bruce Wayne stood amidst the rubble that had once been his home, his father's home, his grandfather's home. Rachel Dawes, childhood friend, one of three people in the world he felt he could truly trust, was walking away from him. She had just practically promised that he would not see her until Gotham no longer needed Batman, until he could drop the playboy façade and just be Bruce._

_He couldn't see anything of the sort happening, what with the Arkham Asylum emptying its filth into the city so recently. The police had their hands full and Lieutenant Gordon was willing to let the Batman help. _

_She was walking away. Walking away from what they could've had. The ideal future he had built up in a private corner of his mind was crumbling away and turning to ash as surely as he stood in ashes. _

"_Just the way it was, sir?" Alfred asked, snapping the billionaire out of his thoughts. _

"_Yeah, why?"_

"_Well, I thought this might be a good opportunity for improving the foundations." _

"_To the southeast corner."_

"_Precisely, sir."_

_The pair of them wandered through the ruin of the mansion a bit longer, watching the crew they'd hired to clean everything up work. They had a penthouse rented for the duration of the repairs to the manor, but neither liked it very much. _

_An hour later it was just the pair of them. They stood on the charred driveway by the car and slowly ate the sandwiches Alfred had prepared before they returned to the site. _

"_All clear?" Alfred asked, craning his neck to look around and taking a step back toward the limo, where various tools to be used in secretly improving the caves beneath the mansion waited. Bruce glanced around, seeing nothing. _

"_Yes."_

"_Don't forget to look up," Clark said, drifting down to land a few paces in front of the car they were standing by. Alfred blinked, still not quite used to seeing a man fly even after a year hearing about the wonders of the Superman of Metropolis. _

"_Evening, Clark," Bruce said, striding forward and shaking Clark's hand as though it were an everyday occurance to have an old friend literally drop in. _

"_I heard you had a bit of a party," Clark said, smiling. _

"_The papers failed to connect a few rather important dots," Bruce scowled. Clark nodded._

"_And I'm sure you're thankful for it," he surveyed the damage. The manor had been devastated, to put it simply. Nothing was salveagable except, perhaps, for the foundations, and the greenhouse that was entirely separate from the house. _

"_This is a rather large blow to the façade I was trying to maintain."_

"_Last article I read proclaimed you a drunken playboy who had a tantrum and burned down his own mansion," Clark grinned, turning so that he was looking at Bruce again; "then he bought Wayne Enterprises out from under his managers the next afternoon without so much as raising his glass in a toast."_

"_Bit of a contradiction, isn't it?" Alfred asked, standing behind the pair of younger men. Clark's lips twitched but he attempted to hide it when Bruce didn't seem so light-hearted about the whole situation. _

"_Too much of a contradiction."_

"_Just pick one to reinforce," Clark suggested. "Either get yourself known as a drunk, or get yourself known as a savvy businessman… and keep the playboy bit in either, I think. It adds to the overall effect of the billionaire lifestyle."_

"_Says the starving journalist who wears bad suits and even worse ties," Bruce grinned. Clark smirked, not rising to the bait as he had no need to discuss the lack of women in his life and the over-abundance in Bruce's and the way those statistics correlated with their differing fashion choices. He had Lois. Having a single, loyal friend—even if she couldn't know the whole truth about him—was enough to sustain him; he couldn't risk a lover anyway, not being who he was, and especially not with super-strength. _

"_This suit isn't so bad," Clark commented, brushing nonexistent dust off of the front of the form-fitting Superman suit and the raised 'S' symbol. Bruce chuckled. _

"_It's very… colorful."_

"_Yes, well. We can't all go for the black Kevlar. Supply and demand, you know—can't be driving the price up when so many soldiers are finding it so handy."_

"_Sometimes you are just too weird, Mr. Kent," Bruce laughed, shaking his head and turning back to look over the rubble. _

"_What will you do now?" Clark asked after a moment (in which he had made a mental note to spend less time with Lois when she was jittery on caffeine, as he tended to pick up on her random, and often nonsensical, jokes when he did so). _

"_Hm?" Bruce raised an eyebrow. "Oh. Rebuild."_

_And he did. _

_Clark helped as much as possible, flying the short distance across to Gotham on weekends to help with the heavy-lifting and the more structural bits of the modifications Bruce and Alfred had planned for the 'Bat Cave.' His time was stretched to its limits, though. The criminals of the world were testing Superman's limits, and Lex Luthor was gaining power in Metropolis after his second appeal had gotten him released on a technicality. He had an elaborate underground organized crime syndicate throughout Metropolis, spreading to parts of Gotham—Bruce, however, let Clark deal with Lex, both because Clark had a bit of a nemesis in Luthor and because he was busy rebuilding his house and dealing with the Arkham escapees. One that called himself the Joker was proving particularly difficult to bring in and causing damage every day that he was out in society. _

_-_

_A year later, Wayne Manor was returned to its former glory. Clark was the only one to attend Bruce's birthday party that year, though the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, Lucius Fox, sent a nice fruit basket and a card that had made Bruce smile. Bruce hadn't been much for celebrating that year. Rachel ignored him as best as she could when they found themselves at the same parties or other sorts of gathering, and made an effort to avoid contact with Batman._

"_I understand why she's doing it," Bruce admitted that night as he and Clark worked their way through a second bottle of wine. Clark raised an eyebrow, waiting for his friend to continue. "It would be difficult, socially and emotionally, to be seen with me publicly. Similarly, she'd surely worry about me every night when I go out to do what I do. It would be no good."_

"_Don't you think she worries about you now?"_

"_She worries about me?" Bruce asked, seemingly startled, looking up, searching Clark's face for the answer as though it were the most important in the world. Clark paused a moment before answering._

"_Bruce, I don't make a habit of keeping tabs on people unless they seem likely to be putting others in danger in the near future."_

"_Yet you listen for your mother and myself regularly…" Bruce smirked._

"_That's different," Clark's eyes narrowed. "And don't change the subject."_

"_I just don't want her worrying about me, Clark. I want her to be happy," he sighed, finishing off his wine but not pouring another. He was sitting at the desk, Clark across the desk holding his nearly-full second glass as though savoring the feel of it in his hand instead of drinking from it. "Even if she moves on and settles down and never thinks of me again, I'll be happy because she isn't sitting downstairs waiting for me to get back and worrying about everything that I'm surely getting into."_

_Clark thought he sounded just a tad pretentious, but didn't say anything, just observing his friend. He set his half-full wine glass down on the desk between them. _

"_That doesn't make any sense at all, Bruce," he said after a moment. Bruce just smiled. _

"_No. It wouldn't."_

- - -

Lois fell asleep in his arms, emotionally drained. They hadn't had any sort of significant conversation though the need for it was greater than ever.

He'd carried her into his bedroom and tucked her into his bed. He'd slept on the couch, pulling the spare comforter up over his face and leaving his glasses on the table. Sleep had been hard to come by, though. The city was oddly at peace, almost the quiet before the storm; it was very eerie.

And he had a lot to think about.

It was the second time she'd cried herself to sleep in his arms; something he hadn't ever expected to occur even once.

The memory of Bruce had surfaced unbidden and he'd found himself dwelling on it more than he had since it had occurred. He hadn't understood Bruce's feelings or concerns about Rachel at the time. He had managed to get into a place with Lois, at that time, that made it possible for them to be friends; that made it possible for him to waylay her worries as Clark about Superman. It hadn't gotten difficult until he'd realized he loved her, then everything Bruce had been feeling towards Rachel had made sense.

All Clark could think about as he forced himself to relax into sleep was that Bruce and Rachel had never had a happy ending. They still rarely spoke, even though he knew they both still cared for each other.

They didn't have Jason, though.


	24. Chapter 24

Clark was able to make a quick circuit of the world, putting out a few fires and pulling a few cross-country skiers out of an avalanche flow, before Lois even began to wake. It was Saturday, their day off. He glanced into 312 Riverside Drive as he passed; it was as empty as he'd known it to be.

Back at his apartment, Clark spun out of the Suit and back into his pajamas and was in the middle of making omelets when Lois woke and made her way to the kitchen. She seemed disoriented for a minute, then she got herself a cup of coffee and silently watched him fix breakfast.

They ate in silence as well, though it was, at least, a comfortable silence.

Lois pushed her plate back when she'd finished with a long sigh, swallowing the last of her coffee and looking across the table at Clark, who was on his second cup of coffee and had been watching her finish her eggs.

"I'm going to talk to Richard today," she said. Clark nodded, knowing that she'd been thinking about how to approach the situation all morning.

Guilt struck him through to the core. She was talking about leaving Richard for him. In her mind, it was that simple, if anything like this could be labeled 'simple.' She was leaving her fiancé for her best friend, who had been more accepting of her son's heritage, who had appeared and suddenly become the better option in mind and heart. She didn't have all the information, though. She had yet to put him and Superman together again, she was too busy worrying about Jason and Richard and everything else in her life to dwell on safe, comfortable Clark. She just needed him to be her rock right now and he wanted nothing better than to do that for her.

Horrible, horrible guilt.

"It'll be a great phone call. I'm looking forward to it," she said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

"Lois, you don't have—" he began, but stopped short, biting his lip. He looked at her for a moment and then nodded. He couldn't bring himself to ask her not to call him.

- - -

"Thomas, hi, it's Lois," Lois said. She'd gone grocery shopping, returned to Riverside Drive, had a shower, changed her clothes, and sat down to look at the phone for awhile before dialing the number. Richard's father was slightly less pleasant than the General, in her opinion. He was withdrawn, cold; didn't seem to like Jason all that much. The General was by no means the most pleasant type of grandfather, but at least he seemed to enjoy his grandchildren.

"Hello, Lois; what can I do for you?"

"Is Richard there?"

"Yes, I'll get him for you."

- - -

Clark was trying very hard not to listen to Lois's argument with Richard. It was difficult, though. She was shouting rather loudly and he had become more tuned-in to her than he ever had before as of late.

Her biggest affront was his taking Jason to Gotham without a single word to her—of course, it was just the latest and largest in a long list of small issues that had been building since before Clark had returned to Metropolis, Superman to Earth, however it was looked at. Richard had his bones to pick with her too, of course. They were falling apart at the seams.

He managed to distract himself with a twenty car pile-up in South Dakota for the majority of the call, but the voices were always at the back of his mind.

It was nearing three when he returned to Metropolis. Warily, he extended his hearing range toward Riverside Drive.

"You bring him home; you bring him home right _now_!" Lois shouted, then slammed the phone down. Of course, it sprang off the set and she spent the next minute trying to stop it from skittering across the kitchen floor and to properly turn it off.

- - -

Lois sat in the Adirondack chair in the back yard, watching the water and waiting for the sea plane to land on the harbor. It was Richard's sea plane, but all the Whites seemed to be able to fly it, and they usually just called ahead before one of them took it out for whatever reason. As it was, Richard would've flown them to Smallville or Gotham or wherever if he'd had a choice, but his father had taken the sea plane out a few days before—after he'd stopped in to check up on Richard in the hospital after he'd been shot (it was a very brief visit)—and they hadn't had that option. However, that left the sea plane in Gotham, ready for Richard to fly it back when his furious fiancée called him and demanded that he return with her son.

She heard the thrum of the engines first, then saw the lights of the plane as it taxied across the harbor toward their dock. Lois felt something cold turn over in her stomach but she swiftly pushed it away—Lois Lane nervous about an argument? Unheard of. Not Lois 'Mad Dog' Lane, surely.

She had had an hour between her argument with him on the phone and his arrival to think everything through for the hundredth time. Richard was a part of her routine. He was comfortable and stable, and he had been exactly what and who she'd needed when Jason was born, but he wasn't anymore. Their relationship had plateued long ago and they both knew it. They had run out of things to talk about. They had begun looking in different directions, not because they were trying not to notice something but because they were interested in things that were in those opposing directions. Their common factor had been Jason and the thought that he shared a biological connection with both of them—not just the biological connection, though; they both loved him.

That would be the hardest part, she knew.

The thing was: the spark had fled their relationship almost a year ago. Superman's return had thrown it into sharp relief, stirring up old feelings and memories of adventures and a completely different life that Richard wasn't a part of. Then Clark had stepped back into her life so seamlessly that it was as though he hadn't left, and she'd realized what a hole he'd left… And then he'd filled not only the hole that he'd left behind, but the hole that was forming between her and Richard. And he hadn't even done it on purpose!

Lois had realized that she'd changed, and Richard had realized that he hadn't known that there had been a difference. That was a problem.

She wasn't just leaving Richard for Clark, she was leaving Richard for herself. She didn't want to end up routed into an unhappy marriage like a woman on a Lifetime movie. She didn't really need an adventure, if she did she would be leaving Richard for Superman.

_And really_, she told herself, _it's not as though you're _leaving_ Richard. He's leaving you, too. It's a separation. A mutual agreement, if you will..._

Richard jumped out of the sea plane and tied it to the dock. She realized, again, that there was no leap in her chest at the sight of him. She had hardly missed him. There wasn't so much anger as she'd expected either—at least not at first; the moment he helped Jason from the plane the anger returned.

_He took away my son!_

Rationally, she knew Richard hadn't done anything remotely similar to kidnapping Jason. She didn't want to think rationally, though.

"Hey, Jason," she said when they reached her, still sitting in her chair. "Did you have a good time at Grandpa's?"

"Yep," Jason said, but his tone and his face told her that he hadn't. She smiled anyway.

"It's good to have you back. I missed you!"

"I missed you too," that bit, at least, was true so far as she could tell. He stepped forward and gave her a hug before looking between them. Lois felt something else clench in the pit of her stomach—it was cold and unpleasant, but completely different from the thing that had been there earlier. Jason knew that the two people who had raised him, been his parents, were about to fight, probably about to separate. He knew how that worked—some of his friends from school had parents who were divorced. He knew how it worked, if not the reality of it.

"Can I have a sandwich?"

"Sure, munchkin—let's get you set up, huh?" Jason just nodded, leading the way into the house toward the kitchen. Lois and Richard exchanged a look over Jason's head but didn't say anything.

The kitchen was loaded with tension as Lois went about preparing Jason's lunch. She'd gone shopping on auto-pilot, not realizing it until she'd gotten home. The simple domesticity of it made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.

Richard mixed himself a glass of iced tea and then sat at the table with Jason while he waited. Jason was remarkably still, watching Lois as she made his sandwich.

"Hey Jase—" Lois started, only to be cut off by Richard's cell phone. Her mouth snapped shut and Jason stopped mid-chew to watch his dad answer his phone.

"Richard White," he said—the way he answered when the caller ID read 'Daily Planet.' Lois wanted to go to the _Planet_ and kick Perry in the shins. "Are you sure, Uncle Perry? I mean… now's not the best time…" a long pause. Lois could hear the shadow of Perry's voice, just loud enough for the tone to come across. The editor-in-chief was taking no arguments. "Yes. Alright… No, I understand… Sure, fine—I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Got to go into work?" Lois asked, though she knew well enough. Richard only looked half sorry.

"Yeah. He saw the plane when we circled around to land in the harbor."

"Of course he did," it wasn't that she didn't believe him; it was just that it conveniently postponed their argument and she wanted to get it over with. Richard frowned.

"He wants me in to sign off on a few of the official things," he opened his mouth to add something, stopped, and then frowned at the table for a moment before he met her eyes again. "I'll be home as soon as I can… Then we can—you know."

"Have fun," she said, dismissively, staring at Jason's sandwich. She listened as he stood and gathered the car keys, opened the garage door, pulled out of the driveway. For some reason she was furious that he hadn't closed the garage door behind him.

"Are you okay, Mommy?" Jason asked, sounding very young. She smiled at him though she didn't feel it, then stood.

"Yeah, honey, I'm okay," she looked around the room for a moment. "I'm just going to go introduce my forehead to the wall for awhile, okay?"

"Mommy," he chuckled. She must've looked very sad, because he stood up and walked around the table to hug her around the waist.

It helped more than she could've hoped.


	25. Chapter 25

"Mister Jimmy, Mister Jimmy

"Mister Jimmy, Mister Jimmy!"

Jimmy slammed out of the monotony of organizing photo albums rather quickly as Jason Lane dashed into the conference room door with a roll of film in each hand.

"Hey, Jason; good to see you around again."

Jason beamed and gave him an awkward hug while he sat, then held up the film he'd brought with him. "Can you develop this for me, please? Mom said you'd do it better than the guy at the groceries store."

"Sure thing," Jimmy said, grinning to himself—not only would he get an uncensored look at Jason's photos from the Kent farm, but he'd have something else to do besides organizing the albums.

"Thanks!" Jason said and bobbed on the balls of his feet for a moment, waiting for Jimmy to move. Jimmy wasn't moving. "Can I watch?"

"Oh, sure… er, let's go."

"M'kay!"

Jimmy quickly finished putting a few pictures of a very young Perry White into the 1962 album (he'd been a spotty-faced intern) and tidied everything so he'd be able to pick it up where he'd left off once he'd finished with Jason's film, then led Jason through the bullpen to the dark room tucked to one side of the elevators.

Several hours later, the bullpen was almost empty—Richard was still in his office with a stack of paperwork in his 'in' box as tall as his son, and Perry was having an argument over the phone— and Jimmy had finally finished developing all of Jason's photos. Said little boy was sound asleep in a corner of the dark room; developing photos hadn't been nearly so entertaining as he'd hoped for, but it had provided a nice spot for him to drift off into sleep.

Jimmy glanced around the bullpen again. Lois was still MIA, having disappeared shortly after her arrival, only notifying Richard that he needed to watch Jason before heading for the stairwell. Jimmy only hoped that she wasn't smoking a smuggled pack of cigarettes.

With a sigh, he bolted the door to the dark room and turned on the small lamp that was the only source of non-red light available, stacking the 4X6 photos neatly together and settling onto the three-legged stool to have a look at them.

The first picture was a close-up of a rather confused-looking goat.

- - -

It took Clark a good hour to realize what was happening.

Richard had been called into the _Daily Planet_ and Lois had followed him there, seeming to be prepared to wait just outside his office and have the argument that was hanging over their heads on the spot when he finished his paperwork. She sent Jason off with Jimmy to develop his photos from their 'vacation' in Smallville, then—this was what had caught him off-guard—walked slowly up the stairs and taken her position on the roof.

Clark had realized he was snooping and had quickly distracted himself. He'd gone through their notes on Bill Ganelon and kryptonite trafficking, but still found his mind trailing a few blocks down to Lois sitting on the _Daily Planet_ rooftop. Just sitting there.

A shout for help not far off distracted him properly for awhile, and he'd headed for midtown. On his way back from the rescue, he'd passed over the _Daily Planet_ and hovered in the cloud cover upon finding Lois still sitting there on a crate. She wasn't even smoking, though she was playing with her lighter.

Curiosity finally got the better of him, and he dropped from the sky to set upon the thick stone surround. It took her a moment to notice that he was there, but then she smiled at him.

_Actually smiled_.

He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or had gone crazy.

She looked sad, though, which brought his world back into a slightly more normal focus.

"Hello, Miss Lane," his throat worked without his go-ahead, but his voice came out deep and calm, the way Superman's voice usually sounded. The corners of her mouth twitched in another sad smile before her face just looked melancholy again. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," another smile. She drew a long breath and then stood up, facing him properly. He drifted down from the surrounding ledge so that they were closer to eye-level with each other. "I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Alright," he said, assuming the Superman pose—arms crossed solidly across his chest, shoulders set. She looked at him for a moment before speaking, her shoulders unusually slumped.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she truly sounded sorry. So sorry she might start to cry. His hands dropped to his sides, his urge to comfort her almost overpowering—but he knew she wouldn't have it if he tried. "I'm sorry, but there's no way we can really be together."

He figured he might look like a fish if she were to look him in the face. She was staring at his boots, though.

"You weren't there," her voice cracked on 'there.' She took another deep breath and plunged again, still dictating to his boots. "You weren't there, and we _both_ know you can't do what a father should… Don't get me wrong!" she glanced at his face, as though afraid he would take offense. He watched her as she backtracked, eyes darting down to his boots again. "I just meant… I completely understand. You have responsibilities to the world; you can't put one person—or two people—before the rest of the world. You're meant for bigger things than being a family man," she swallowed the lump in her throat and pressed ahead, her words tumbling from her lips. "And don't think that I don't want you to be a part of Jason's life. You _are_ his father, and I wouldn't dream of keeping you away. I just can't… I just _can't_."

She ran out of steam.

He wondered if looking at his boots made it any easier to speak to him—he was well aware of his presence, made a habit of slouching when he was in street clothes to remove part of it… The bright red boots were as famous as his face, though. Trademark.

"I just can't get on with my life until this _thing_ between us is settled," the usual set to her shoulders came back a bit. "I can't keep going with you in the back of my mind. Trying to get on with things but always wondering if we have a chance… the thing is: we don't. Have a chance, that is."

He realized she was waiting for his response and discovered that he didn't know what the hell he was supposed to say. She had spent the past few months ignoring him, lashing out at him… and, apparently, thinking about him.

"I understand," he said, his throat tight. This wasn't a conversation he'd been expecting to have. He wondered if the supposed opportune moment was slipping away from him so far as revealing his true identity went but couldn't bring himself to tell her what he so desperately needed to tell her.

She finally looked him in the eye, searching his face for the understanding he claimed to possess. He wasn't sure she'd find it there as he'd put his Superman mask firmly in place, not wanting her to see the conflictions he knew would be there otherwise.

_Why does life have to be so complicated?_ he wondered, but the little voice in the back of his head responded—_Would life be any fun if it weren't complicated?_ It was Lois' voice, even though the real Lois, the one standing in front of him, would certainly be on his side when it came to living an uncomplicated life.

He held in a sigh, realizing that that was _exactly_ what she was doing—un-complicating her life. She was gently letting go of Superman, letting go of the history and the romantic tension that had been in the air between them, letting go of the anger she righteously felt toward him. Letting go of those thoughts of a future which were so hopeless in her mind, the ones that were left over from their friendship and romance five years past.

_Tabula rasa_.

He wished it was that simple.

"You do?" she was biting her lip, eyes too bright. He gave her what he hoped was a confident smile, but knew it was a sad smile as well. She was studying him again.

She turned to go, making it to the door to the stairs before he called to her.

"Lois," he asked, looking at _her_ shoes as she turned to face him. She didn't say anything, just waited and watched him as he formulated the question. He looked her in the eye when he spoke, though; "Do you think that I just fell from the sky one day and decided to save the world?"

She opened her mouth to reply, then shut it. He nodded.

"I thought so."


	26. Chapter 26

Richard looked around the bullpen, finding it lacking the person he was looking for. Lois had disappeared into the stairwell almost as soon as she'd appeared in the bullpen, popping her head in the door and telling Jason to 'be good for Daddy' without even glancing at said Daddy. Not that Richard minded.

Jason had doodled for a moment, then pulled out his two rolls of film—both filled up before they left the Kent farm—and asked if he could go talk to Mr. Jimmy. Jimmy had looked bored out of his head, so Richard had said it was alright. Then Jason and Jimmy had disappeared into the perpetual teenager's dark room.

Richard had a huge pile of official documents he needed to get through—mostly travel vouchers he needed to organize to give to the accounting guys the next floor up for documentation. He couldn't concentrate on it, though—not after the conversation he'd had with Perry in the twenty minutes between his arrival and Lois and Jason's.

"_Hans Taylor is retiring."_

"_Yeah. So?" Richard asked, more than a little annoyed that his uncle would pull him away from an argument that had been building for months to tell him that their international correspondent stationed in Germany was retiring. He'd already been well aware as Hans had gotten the okay from Richard before he'd even brought it up with Perry. Perry was aware of that, too. _

"_So, there's a field position open," Perry was watching his nephew closely; Richard suddenly understood why it had been so important for them to speak before he and Lois duked it out. _

"_Are you offering me said field position?"_

"_Yes," Perry leaned back in his big, leather chair. "You're overqualified, but I know it's what you want." He picked a printout up off his desk and handed it to Richard. "Those are the names of those that are qualified to take the position, in the order that I think their qualifications grant them."_

_Richard glanced over the list. He knew everybody on it—most of them were in his section, International, which made sense. The first requirement for a field position in another country was knowledge of the language. Richard had been fluent since he'd spent a summer in Germany as an exchange student after his junior year of high school. That exchange trip was both the reason he'd gotten into journalism (he'd stayed with a family whose patriarch was somewhat of an ace reporter) and that he'd fallen in love with travel._

_The only thing typed out was the list of names, six names in all, spread out down the left hand side of the page. The right hand side was filled with Uncle Perry's cramped, boxy letters in perfectly straight lines describing the qualifications of each possible selection._

_Richard's name was first—he was fluent in German, had a good relations with the U.S. embassy in Germany _and_ the German ambassador to the United States, he'd been in International, _running_ International, for five years and knew how that section of the paper functioned. To Richard's surprise, Clark Kent was second on the list, though his information was a little vague. Kent spoke German like he was fluent in it—whatever that meant—and had globe-trotting experience on top of being a damn good beat reporter with instincts that would help him survive in a foreign country. _

_Richard glanced down the rest of the list. He and Kent were the only real options, in his opinion. The other candidates were all from International, and all of them were indisposable, needed in the section for various reasons (June Summers, fourth on the list, for example, was the only one on staff who spoke Italian and therefore spent the majority of her time these days in Washington tailing the ambassador from Italy, as nobody could figure out why he was in Washington in the first place). _

Richard put his head in his hands, elbows resting on the desk top, feeling the need for a very stiff drink and wondering where it was Lois hid the tequila she seemed to pull out of nowhere after bad days at the bullpen. The first time she'd done it he'd thought Perry would flip a gasket and she'd be fired, star reporter or not. Instead, Perry had just shaken his head and returned to his work, leaving Richard even more confused.

_But that's part of it too, isn't it?_ he asked himself. _Even Perry seems to know Lois Lane better than I do. The real Lois Lane._

_And I never even suspected I'd been living with an imposter._

He sighed, turning his thoughts back over to the Hans problem.

_So it comes down to me choosing whether I'm going to bow out of Lois's life quietly, or if I'm going to put up a fight. Do I go to Germany, or do I send Kent._

Only then did it occur to him that he hadn't even thought that Lois would so much as consider joining him in Germany.

- - -

Lois stood with her hand on the handle to the roof access for a long time after Superman had disappeared into the clouds.

"_Do you think that I just fell from the sky one day and decided to save the world?"_

"_I thought so."_

His words reverberated through her mind, freezing her in place. He'd sounded almost sad.

"_Do you think I just fell from the sky one day and decided to save the world?"_

Hadn't he? Why had she never considered it before? Why _would_ an alien suddenly show up and decide to become the protector of humanity, anyway?

_Had _she considered it before?

It began to rain, as the heavy clouds of the past few days had suggested it would. Only when she was thoroughly soaked did she open the door and take a few steps inside the little metal box that was the roof access—the landing and eight steps down to the elevator doors and the door to the stairs. She'd spent a ridiculous amount of time in that little box over the years—smoking away from bad weather with the door propped open, waiting for Superman out of wind, rain, or intense sun.

Most of her memories of the roof included Superman. Or Clark.

"_Do you think I just fell from the sky one day and decided to save the world?"_


	27. Chapter 27

Jason had had a nap in the dark room, which meant he would be awake until the middle of the night. Richard honestly didn't mind at the moment—he was sure _he'd_ be up into the middle of the night anyway.

"Lookit my pictures, Daddy," Jason said, standing next to the arm of his chair and holding them out so Richard could see. _Why am I always 'Daddy' these days?_ Richard wondered as he politely inclined his head so that he could look at the pictures as Jason told him about each one. _Never 'Dad' anymore... Is it a regression of some sort, or something else??_

"This is Jemima the goat," Jason started, flipping to the next one almost as soon as Richard had registered the goat staring at the camera as though it was wondering if it should be afraid of it. "This is Uncle Clark's mom's house… this is the barn… this is Shelby… this is Uncle Clark watching the sunrise… this is the corn… this is Mrs. Martha's kitchen… these are the chickens Uncle Clark let me feed… this is inside the barn… this is Uncle Clark showing me the horses…"

Richard found himself wishing the boy would slow down and give him a chance to actually see some of the pictures. Most of the scenes captured were ones that he'd seen before, but they were actually quite good snapshots. The very low angle captured things that Richard, as an adult looking at things from an adult's eye-level, missed. He made a mental note to look through them more closely later and let Jason continue to flip through them at top-speed, catching glimpses of Kent's uncles, broad grins, people generally having a good time.

- - -

It took almost two hours, but Richard finally made it through all of his paperwork. Jimmy had finished the final photo album, given a triumphant whoop so loud the assistant editor had been able to hear it through the glass that separated their rooms, and bolted for the door as though he was afraid Perry was going to assign him another menial task. That was an entire half hour before Richard had reached for his last travel voucher and signed his name in the appropriate blank.

"Ready to head out, Jase?" he asked, and Jason leapt to his feet, nodding enthusiastically. He couldn't help but pity the kid for a moment, raised in a bullpen. He probably spent a good deal of time bored out of his brain.

Lois had a game of solitaire going when they approached her desk, but she was just holding the mouse and staring at the cards. The timer in the bottom corner said she'd had the game going for twenty minutes and counting—it looked as though she might've made three moves. Her hair hung damply around her face from whatever time she'd spent on the roof in the rain.

_Much on your mind, Lois?_ he almost chuckled, but he had plenty on his mind as well.

- - -

Bill Ganelon paced just outside the entrance to the tunnels in the Narrows. They had once been subway tunnels, back when Bruce Wayne's father had been putting money into that sort of thing. Back when somebody had cared. The tunnels for the subway had been constructed and promptly forgotten, leaving them, for the most part, unfinished. Ganelon had never asked how the Boss had found them, nor just to what extent he had worked on them himself—not so much himself as his thugs, though. He'd never met the Boss, but he didn't seem the type to do any real physical labor. The Boss prided himself in being the brain of the operation, leaving the real work to others—like Bill.

The Boss wouldn't be happy to discover that Bill had left the tunnels, but Bill wasn't in the mood to care, at the moment. He'd left the tunnels before, anyway, and there had been no repercussions. Batman was no Superman, after all.

The phone continued to ring and Ganelon's pacing increased. _What's the use of giving me a cell phone number if you never answer it?!_

"Hello?" the Boss sounded furious even in the one, simple word.

"Boss," Ganelon began, but the Boss cut him off.

"Bill. How is it that you have service in those tunnels?"

"I just stepped outside…" Ganelon said, but the tone of the Boss's voice told him that the Boss was well aware of it and that he wasn't happy about it.

"I told you to stay in those tunnels."

"I-I know, I just thought—I had something I wanted to ask you," he didn't feel as though he should be afraid of this ghost-character, this Boss with bottomless pockets but no face, but the tone in the voice on the other end reminded him just why he had made a habit to just follow the orders he was given without question, to take each bit of information he received with thanks even if it seemed pointless.

"I _told_ you to _stay _in those_ tunnels_," it was a growl now.

"I know, and I'm sorry, s-sir, Boss, I just—I had a question."

"What have you done now?" the Boss asked, sounding almost patient but equally as terrifying as usual.

"D-done?" Ganelon couldn't believe he'd been reduced to a stuttering idiot simply by the tone of a faceless voice.

"You had a question?" Bored.

"Yeah—yes," Ganelon swallowed, not wanting to ask his question anymore. "I was just wonderng if the kryptonite you gave us this time was real or not?"

Silence on the other end.

"What I mean is, um; last time, at the bunker in Metropolis, well," he was shifting from foot to foot, looking at the ground even though he didn't have anybody's eyes to avoid. "The kryptonite in the bunker, when we burned everything, it flaked and got all charred. It was fake… sir."

Again, silence.

"I was just wondering if you sent us real kryptonite this time," he figured he was dead anyway by this point, so he might as well suck it up and finish. "As we'll probably end up facing Superman eventually—we're out of places to run to. I was just wondering if we'll actually have something to defend ourselves with, y'know?"

"Who delivered the false kryptonite to the bunker?"

"W-who delivered…?" Ganelong thought back, remembered a fat guy in a bad toupe. "Um. Ernie?"

"And who delieverd the kryptonite to the tunnels?"

"Most of it was already here… Boss," Ganelon began pacing again. "Ernie brought the other stuff, though."

"Burn a sample of what Ernie delivered," the Boss instructed. He didn't sound angry anymore, just cruelly pleased somehow. "If it flakes, call Ernie and order more."

"Alright, Boss; sure thing, sir," Ganelon was nodding even though there was nobody to see him in the abandoned section of the Narrows in the middle of the afternoon when Gotham was at work and the nocturnal bat-man was indoors somewhere. "But isn't it fake if it flakes?"

"Is it?" it sounded rhetorical, but Ganelon had never been good at detecting that sort of thing.

"I-I thought so."

"Why don't you toss it at Superman, just to be sure."

"I really don't think that's a good idea, Boss!"

"Shut up, you idiot!"

Ganelon stopped talking immediately.

"Burn the sample, call Ernie, report back. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

The line went dead.

Bill hurried back into the tunnels, locking the doors firmly behind him and wishing he'd never called the Boss.

- - -

The ride back to Riverside Drive wasn't the most pleasant ride those in the car had experienced, to put it nicely. Richard drove, Lois stared out her passenger window, watching the rain, and Jason listened. Since that night on the Kent farm, his ears had been slowly opening up to new levels of noise. As long as it didn't happen all at once like it had before, Jason was fascinated.

They finally pulled into their driveway. Jason hopped out of the car and ran up to his bedroom; Richard and Lois followed him into the house at a more sedate pace, dreading the upcoming conversation.

"Uncle Perry offered me a job today," Richard finally said. They were standing in the kitchen, Lois leaning against the center island casually though she didn't feel it.

"Oh?"

"_Do you think I just fell from the sky one day and decided to save the world?"_

"Yeah." The oven dinged to let them know it was done preheating and Richard put the frozen pizza in and set the timer before continuing. "Hans is retiring."

"Hans is in Germany."

"Yeah," he looked at the center island for a moment, pulling his thoughts together. Lois nearly held her breath. "He's got a month left before he's out. Hans, I mean. Uncle Perry wants to get somebody over there by the end of the week so that Hans can show them the ropes, introduce them around… somebody already fluent in German."

"You're fluent in German."

"Yeah. That's why he asked me."

Lois wondered when talking to Richard had become so awkward, where all of her anger had gone, if, maybe, she should be sad that another chapter in her life was closing as she watched.

_Not an argument, then; a conversation._

"Oh…" she glanced around the room. "It's a step down, you know."

"It's a step I've been meaning to take," he said, but she knew that already. "I don't like sitting in an office—I want to get back out in the field."

"I know."

"Yeah."

"When do you leave?"

"Day after tomorrow."

"Oh."

"I'll be back for the Anniversary Gala. And Christmas."

"That's good," she resisted the urge to bite her thumb nail. "Jason will miss you."

"I'll miss him, too."

Lois nodded, finally glancing up to meet Richard's eyes, but he was looking at the fridge.

"I just have one thing to ask. About Jason."

"Okay."

- - -

Clark was enjoying a rare moment of normalcy. He had gone to the corner grocery and gotten a bag of things to fill up his fridge, the basics for the next few days and a few specifics for dinner. It was nice to feel normal, walking home with a bag of groceries and a paper.

Normalcy went out the window when he approached the lobby of his apartment complex. Jason Lane was standing on tip-toe, big-ol' school bag, the one he'd packed full of everything to bring to Kansas, at his feet, leaning up on the security desk and deep in an argument with George, the security guard.

"I'm sorry, son, but I can't let you up there," George said patiently but as though he'd said it quite a few times already.

"But I _have_ to see Uncle Clark!" Jason protested, near tears. He looked exhausted despite the nap Clark knew he'd taken in the dark room at the _Planet_ that afternoon. "He's Clark Kent—his apartment's all the way up at the top of the steps across from the lady with all the cats."

"Go home, kid," George said kindly. It was almost 8p, approaching and passing Jason's bedtime. "I can't let you up there without previous written consent."

"But _mister_!" Jason protested again. Clark peeked into his backpack, seeing inside all the things a five-year-old takes with him when he runs away.

"Kid," George sighed, preparing to begin again.

Clark nearly walked into the revolving door, almost dropped his paper in surprise when he remembered he had been x-raying through to see Jason, that he wasn't actually in the lobby yet. After a moment's struggle with the revolving door, he made it inside and crossed toward the desk.

"Jason?" Clark asked, raising his eyebrows.

"D-Uncle Clark!" his expression was pure relief, and he was across the distance between them in a flash that almost had Clark worrying about secrets. He dropped the paper to awkwardly catch his son against his leg.

Clark looked up at George for some kind of further clue, but the security guard just looked bemused—as though he hadn't really believed Jason was who he had said he was.

"What's up, Jason?" he finally asked, as though they had bumped into each other in the bullpen, which was hardly unusual.

"Can I live with you?"it was the tears on the edge of Jason's voice that made Clark really worried.

"Here, let's go up and we'll talk."

Jason was silent as Clark gathered the backpack and the fallen paper, added Jason to the short but growing list of people allowed to visit him. He even allowed himself to be hoisted up onto Clark's hip for the long trek up the stairs.

"Now," Clark said once they'd arrived at his apartment. "Why do you want to live with me? What happened?"

Jason took a deep breath before he began. "Because I can hear almost everything almost _all _the time! Mom doesn't get it. What if it gets too loud again?" he frowned, looking at Clark's feet much like his mother had only hours before, only this time there were no bright-red boots, just brown leather shoes any guy could be wearing. "And what if I start to be more like you, like at the farm? I feel strong a lot now. When we were at Grandpa's house in Gotham I accidentally broke one of my cars just by picking it up! What do I do when that happens? Daddy Richard didn't know! He looked scared and sad and threw it away and told me to be more careful. I _was _being careful!" there was a definite note of panic in his voice. Clark drew him close and held him tight; Jason squeezed back so hard any other person would've been broken by the force of it. The boy was shaking. "Mom and Daddy Richard have been grumpy with each other a lot," Jason added quietly, still holding on though not so tightly after the initial squeeze had subsided. "They were fighting, or they were going to fight, when I left."

Clark opened his mouth to say something but stopped, realizing that he had no idea what the right thing to say was. The kid was very smart, much smarter than any other five-year-old Clark knew. Of course, he didn't know that many five-year-olds. Jason, though, was something else.

"Why did you think they were going to fight?" Clark asked cautiously, extending his hearing across town toward Riverside Drive for a moment. There was plenty of interference with such a wide range, but he could pick out Lois's voice even among such a mess of sound—she and Richard were talking about Richard writing to Jason and sending him postcards, calling on Sundays, visiting some weekends and on holidays. A civil conversation, but also a sad one.

"I was listening to them from my room, so they didn't know that I heard them. But I did," Clark withheld his astonishment for a moment, waiting to hear what else Jason was going to say before he got excited about the expanding abilities—strength had been his first power to develop, that he had to learn how to control. He had figured it out mostly on his own, as it seemed Jason had taken it upon himself to do. "Daddy Richard said he was going to Germany. I think he wants me to go with him. I don't want to go to Germany!" he paused. "Where's Germany?"

"Germany is in Europe."

"That's far away," Jason mumbled.

"Yes, it is," Clark said.

"They were talking about somebody called Hans, that he was retiring or something. He was in Germany and Uncle Perry wants Daddy Richard to go there and look at ropes with him."

"And your mom's not going with him?"

"No."

"But he wants you to go with him?"

Jason shrugged. "I don't want to go! I came here before they could come and get me and make me go to Germany. I could hear you getting closer to the place that your heartbeat always stays still for a little while every night, so I knew you were coming back to your house."

Clark blinked at his son for a moment, pride welling up in his chest before he carefully locked it away for later. "I don't think they'd make you go to Germany with Richard, Jason," Clark said, trying to reassure the boy. Jason looked like he was going to have an asthma attack from the nerves.

"Then why did Daddy Richard say that he had questions about me?" Jason was on his feet looking as though he might start pacing. Clark would've found it amusing if the conversation weren't so serious.

"Maybe he wanted to ask your mom if it would be alright if he sent you postcards?" Clark suggested, suddenly not feeling so guilty about listening in for that brief moment. "Wouldn't that be cool? Pictures from Germany with letters from Richard on the back? You could write him back and tell him what you're doing in Metropolis. Then you wouldn't miss him so much between visits."

Jason looked pensive for a moment before he smiled a small smile, examining his father shrewdly and reminding him very much of Lois. "You wouldn't be mad if I still talked to Daddy Richard? Even because you're my real dad and I'd be living with you instead of him?"

"Jason," Clark said very seriously, holding onto his shoulders and looking into the identical cerulean eyes with utter seriousness. "Richard has been your dad for your entire life. He took care of you and your mom while I was gone. Of _course_ it's okay if you want to still talk to him and hang out with him."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Really, really?"

"Really, really," Clark agreed, adding the Scottish accent for the complete reference and getting a giggle out of the little boy. They sat together for a moment, Jason slowly calming down, Clark just glad Jason was calming down.

"And you promise I won't have to go to Germany?"

"I promise you won't have to go to Germany."

"Even if Mom goes to Germany?"

"Well, if Mom goes to Germany we'll have to talk, but I don't think she'll go to Germany."

"Because you're here in Metropolis?"

"Because _you're_ in Metropolis and Uncle Perry and Jimmy and the _Planet_ and Aunt Lucy and Uncle Ron and the Coffee Shoppe and Nana and General Grandpa are all in Metropolis," Clark amended. Jason nodded sagely after a moment, then turned his bright blue eyes up to his father's very seriously.

"I'm hungry. Can we have burritos?"

Clark laughed and nodded, and they made their way to the kitchen to go through the groceries Clark had picked up before returning home, finding what they needed for allergy-sensitive burritos that had a chance at tasting good.

"So; tell me about your new abilities," Clark said as they were getting ready for their very late dinner after a quick call to Lois to let her know where her son had got to and a promise to talk more in the morning. It had been a long-ish 'quick' phone call.

Clark was browning beef in a pan on the stovetop while Jason sat at the table and colored on a notepad he'd found in Clark's study with crayons he'd brought with him. He was holding the crayon (fire engine red as he was filling in Superman's cape) very carefully; as though he was afraid it would crunch into a hundred pieces.

"What about them?" Jason asked evasively, setting the red aside for black and coloring Superman's hair appropriately, then adding a rather fine walrus mustache.

"Tell me about your hearing. You said you knew where I lived because you heard my heartbeat stay here for the longest."

"Yep," Jason shrugged, smiling down at his masterpiece and hopping up to put it on the fridge by way of another magnet—there were already two on the door, though neither of _those _Supermen had mustaches. "After I started listening to heartbeats, at Gramma's farm, I got good at _not_ listening to other stuff because I was listening to heartbeats instead. I could always find yours when we were at the farm, and it was louder and stronger anyway, so I just kept listening. It wasn't hard."

Clark was trying hard not to gape at his son. It had been _very _hard for him to learn that trick way back when.

"I can hear Mommy's and Daddy Richard's without trying very hard, either."

"I'm very proud of you, Jason," Clark finally managed to say, looking over his shoulder at his son to find the boy beaming up at him. _Seems the truth was the right thing to say, there_, Clark thought, mentally patting himself on the back. _I might just figure this fatherhood thing out yet… but I probably won't _ever _figure _him_ out…_ he chuckled, seeing Jason give the Superman in his next picture another fantastic mustache.


	28. Chapter 28

Lois slept fitfully and rose early, finding herself very uneasy without Jason nearby. They'd been separated for so long, the longest yet, then he'd been with her for only a few moments, it seemed, before he'd run off to Clark's. She wasn't even sure how he'd found Clark's apartment let alone gotten there on his own. Just thinking about it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up with worries about what _could_ have happened.

_Doesn't he _know_ that we spent the past few _weeks_ in hiding so that those creeps didn't kidnap him?!_ she thought, desperately wanting a cigarette, but Clark had thrown out the pack she'd smuggled past Richard. Instead, she took a deep breath and had a glass of water, willing herself to calm down and think about anything but cigarettes. _But no, _she reminded herself, _we made it into a vacation for him. He had, _has_, no idea of the danger._

Her mind landed upon Bill Ganelon's voice, muffled by the smoky room and the thick door, "… _experiments_…" She couldn't remember if he'd actually said the word in the particular tone she was remembering, but even a created memory was enough to make her want to call Clark and insist he bring Jason to her immediately.

"You're up early," Richard remarked, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the carafe Lois hadn't touched—for once she hadn't needed it, her own thoughts and terror enough to wake her up.

"I'm worried about Jason," she admitted. It was a conversation they would've had ten months ago, no problem. Now it seemed odd to be sitting in the kitchen in the early hours of the day, just talking, waiting for things to get started.

"You're a very good mother, Lois," Richard said after a moment, a fond look creeping across his face. "I don't know how you ever thought you couldn't do this."

Lois thought back to the late days of her pregnancy, when it had finally hit her that there was a _child_ growing inside her expanding middle and it would soon no longer be inside of her and instead would be in her arms and in need of care and love. She'd feared she didn't have the patience for it, didn't have the heart for it—she'd been telling people for years that she didn't, had been told by plenty that she didn't. Lucy had been her biggest supporter, Richard right behind her, always encouraging. It had been one point during his absence that Lois had desperately wanted Clark back—she had tried not to think about her missing partner. Sometimes it seemed like he hadn't left that big of a hole to fill, Jimmy got her coffee in the mornings then Richard did and she certainly didn't _need_ a partner at work. But there were times, like when she really needed to lash out at somebody but didn't want to drive anybody away either, or when she needed to be knocked down a peg without realizing she was being knocked down… or when she just needed to hear Clark say, "Sweetheart, it'll be fine, just relax, you're brilliant." Then she had really missed him.

She had never, of course, mentioned him, let alone _missing_ him, to anybody, though. That was too personal. He was just a friend from work, but he was her only _friend_ from work. She had colleagues, contacts, acquaintances, sure, just not friends, really. She was _close_ to Perry and Jimmy, she was romantically involved with Richard, she had a passing rivalry with Gil and Polly and the other reporters who were at the top of their sections. Clark was her partner, though, her friend. The guy half the bullpen still thought was Jason's father (the other half, of course, thought Superman was Jason's father).

Lois heaved a heavy sigh and poured herself a cup of coffee. It wasn't that she hadn't thought she would be a good mother. She liked kids well enough, _wanted _kids even—eventually. She had just been worried about loving somebody so much that she would stop driving on in other things the way she wanted to. It seemed selfish and adolescent, looking back, but it had been what she'd been worried about.

Breakfast passed quickly—Lois forcing down toast while Richard skipped it altogether to get dressed. "I've got to go to the _Planet_ and get some boxes to pack everything up, and to tell Uncle Perry I'll take the job."

"Need me to do anything around here?"

"Could you see if we've got any boxes lying around that I could use?"

"Sure."

Then Richard had gone, and Lois had gone out into the backyard to watch the sun finish rising. Not for the first time she wondered what a sunrise felt like for Jason. Kal-El (she found herself unable to call him Superman when she thought about their personal moments after the official part of their old interviews ended, or where it concerned Jason) had once tried to explain to her what the sun _felt _like to him. He'd run out of adjectives, lapsed into Kryptonian, tried again in English. 'Wonderful' had been as close as he had come, but he hadn't been satisfied with it.

The sunrise was beautiful, pale pink and yellow playing across the horizon over the harbor, tinting the few puffy white clouds left over from the previous afternoon's storm. Lois decided that if it felt the way it looked 'wonderful' would indeed be an inadequate adjective.

She was about to turn inside and get dressed before calling Clark when Superman drifted down from the clouds, looking refreshed, bathed in the morning light even as it turned to the blue of what would be a fine summer afternoon.

"Good morning," Lois said suspiciously, his appearance bringing to mind his parting words again.

"Good morning, Miss Lane." He looked the way he always did. He sounded the way he always did. That tug at her heart wasn't there anymore, though; it was nice. Just a memory.

As she dwelled on the lack of a 'tug' she realized that there was indeed a tug, she was just refusing to acknowledge it.

She continued to do so, looking up at him as nonchalantly as she could manage; "To what do I owe your early-morning visit?"

"I noticed you were out here and thought I'd say hello, is all," he said, landing lightly in front of her. She glared, then almost laughed when she realized that the reason she was glaring was because she knew he was lying, and she knew he was lying because of the way his chin was tilted, of all things.

"You're lying," she informed him blandly, eyes still narrowed at him though no longer glaring as she found it almost humorous.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You once told me you never lie and now you're lying to me."

"Only a liar claims to never lie," Superman quipped back, looking light and almost energetic for a moment before his shoulders seemed to broaden and he looked at her straight on. "I found another body this morning. In the harbor, just downstream from where the little girl's body was found."

"Is it related, do you think?" Lois asked, motioning for him to follow her into the house as she went after her tape recorder. "Was it a child?" her throat was tight.

"No, it wasn't a child," Superman said, sounding almost relieved. Lois had her tape recorder between them, worrying her thumb nail on the opposite hand as she held it aloft.

"Thank God for that."

"Indeed," Superman shifted his weight for a moment then settled again. "The police are still working to identify the man, but he's definitely no child; middle-aged, balding, a bit rotund…"

"What is it?"

"There was kryptonite on him when I found him."

"_What_?"

"Fake kryptonite, like the stuff that was in the bunker I found you in after you were kidnapped."

"So it's definitely connected to the Napper Neighborhood case, the Boss?"

"I couldn't say either way at the moment," Superman said in such a way that Lois felt he was giving an affirmative.

"Any other information you can give me?"

"Not at the moment, other than that the body was recent, no more than a day or so."

"That's good, though," Lois said, more to herself than Superman. "Nobody's had the time to clean up yet. Maybe we'll get some new leads."

"Maybe," Superman agreed, though his eyes weren't in it.

Lois clicked off the tape recorder and tossed it on the couch next to where they'd come to stand, still worrying her thumb nail She had a lot of questions she wanted to ask him off the record but no idea how to go about asking them.

"Is Jason here?" Superman asked, cutting into Lois's thoughts. She blinked at him—he'd sounded so hopeful.

"… No," Kal-El raised a curious eyebrow. "He's at Clark's."

"Why?"

"He ran away!"

"Why would he do that?" Kal-El asked, almost probed. Lois paused a moment to look at him before answering. He looked curious, if anything; concerned, maybe.

"I don't know! It's not like him at _all_!" Lois burst out. She'd been waiting to burst out at somebody since she'd realized what had happened. Richard had seemed to be in a similar state but had also refrained from reflecting his worry onto her, neither really sure why they did so.

"Was he upset about something?"

"I don't think so—he's usually so mild! Even when he was a baby he hardly cried, let alone threw a temper tantrum! The so-called 'terrible twos' were a daydream… I didn't think he'd _ever_ run away like this!"

"Still waters run deep, Lois," Kal-El said gently after a moment. She looked up at him, listening closely. "I don't get mad very often, but when I do…" he sighed and Lois could tell there was a story behind the sigh she'd like to hear one day. "If he's with Clark then I'm sure he's fine," he gave a smile that hardly seemed to reach his cheeks, let alone his eyes.

Lois's mind grabbed onto what he'd said, knowing it was important somehow but not knowing why. Before she could press him for answers, though, his head twitched to one side ever so slightly and he excused himself to speak to the police about the body that he had found that morning.

- - -

Clark absolutely _hated _when a morning began with a body in the harbor. Bodies exposed to water were simply disgusting. Besides the fact that they were dead, which was off-putting in itself, they were also bloated from absorbing water if they'd been in the harbor for any length of time, and scraped up and raw from the current dragging them across harder surfaces.

The body of Ernest Milton was one of the least pleasant things Clark could imagine waking up to. To say Ernest had been a bit rotund was polite, to say he had been a rather fat man was an understatement and not nearly as polite, to say he had been quite huge was closer to the truth.

Clark had awakened to the first rays of morning sunshine, remembering a nice night with Jason waiting for the boy to get tired, working on his laptop while Jason colored. Eventually, they had slept. The love seat in the tiny study was a comfortable fit for Jason's small form and easily made into a bed by the addition of a few sheets, a pillow, and a blanket. Jason had made the study into his bedroom, unloading his suitcase and spreading out, then falling asleep comfortably on the squishy couch. The study, like Clark's bedroom, didn't have any windows, and the French doors had thick curtains, so they could both manage to sleep through the first rays breaking the horizon. Or they would've if Clark had remembered to close his door.

As it was, Clark woke at first light and made breakfast, the scent and the sun rousing Jason as well. Eggs and bacon to order later, they both dressed for their days and Clark wondered how everything would go down. Then he'd heard it—it was a sound he'd long dreaded, ever since his first week in Metropolis, and particularly since he'd pulled little Leslie's body out of the harbor.

A phone call to Smallville and a quick cross-country flight saw Jason back at the Kent farm helping to feed the chickens and do other morning chores, leaving Clark free to investigate the swooshing, sloshing noise.

Ernest had washed up beneath the commercial docks downstream of the warehouses of interest and their small docks—those were older warehouses, the majority of them empty, their docks and the warehouses themselves built to accommodate smaller shipments and abandoned when the larger warehouses and docks to match had been constructed next door to supply a growing city.

Unlike Leslie, Ernest hadn't been weighted down, simply restrained. He'd probably been a big guy when he'd been alive—he had at least four chins and arms nearly as thick as Clark's thighs—but he'd soaked up water after he'd been discarded, making him even bigger. He'd been beaten and then shot executioner-style in the back of the head, his hands tied together in front of his gut with plastic ties, his ankles as well. What was left of his scalp was mostly hairless, suggesting he was balding or mostly bald. The harbor had not been kind to him—Clark surmised he must've dragged along the bottom for some reason (_Perhaps he _was _weighted down and somehow came loose?_) as he'd been scratched up something awful, chunks of skin missing, especially lower on his body.

It hadn't been a pleasant sight, wedged up near the shore under the dock, bloated and blue.

After he'd called the police, he'd stepped back to let them extricate the body themselves and hung around long enough for his wallet to be taken out of his pocket along with three flat, sharpened kryptonite shivs. He knew immediately that they were fake, but that made them all the more interesting.

Unable to do anything as Superman, Clark had gone to alert Lois to the trouble, ended up talking about Jason. He was sure from the look on his face before he'd departed that he'd said something he shouldn't have, but, for the life of him, he couldn't think what it was.

"Clark, you're just in time," Martha said when he landed, not noticing how distracted her son was as she was distracted herself. "Ben's going to be here any minute."

"What are you two up to today?" Clark asked casually, watching Jason chase one of the straggling chickens around the yard trying to get it to return to the coup—they, the chickens, weren't used to be stuck right back in the coup after they were fed. Shelby was at Clark's knee, watching Jason as well. Clark would've sworn the dog was smiling.

"We've got a plane to Washington D.C. this afternoon—we're leaving for the airport in about ten minutes, that's why I hollered for you to come back so quick," she explained, giving him an apologetic smile. He smiled back, prepared to tease.

"So what's in D.C.?"

"Oh, you know," she rolled her eyes at him; "The White House, a couple of monuments, various other tourist attractions."

"Oh…"

"It was time we had a vacation is all."

"Well," Clark said. He knew Ben Hubbard's daughter lived in D.C., last he'd heard she had become a vegetarian and was running her own corner book store. _I wonder what she has against plants…?_ He shook his head slightly to clear it, grinning at his mother in the most infuriating way possible. "Have fun, Ma. It's a great city."

"We'll try our best."

"Thanks again for watching him on such short notice."

"Not a problem. He was a great help."

Jason chose that moment to walk over with a proud look on his face.

"Got 'em in there!"

"Good job, Jase," Clark chuckled. Martha shot him a look and glanced at her watch.

"Well done, Jason—you beat Clark's old time by ten seconds," Jason burst out laughing at the look on Clark's face and Martha sauntered back into the house with a satisfied smirk on her lips.

- - -

Richard flipped through Jason's pictures more slowly, taking a 'break' from the morning. He'd gone to the bullpen and informed Perry that he would be leaving for Berlin the following afternoon, secured his travel plans with Accounting, and gone to the basement and collected as many cardboard boxes (folded flat and ready to be smashed) he could carry. Arriving home he'd found Lois dressed and in the office at her computer, ear phones plugged into her tape recorder and a quickly-filling word document open. He suspected that if she wasn't obligated to help him she would be out on the prowl, looking for quotes or the like.

Past the picture of the goat, a crooked view of the yellow farmhouse, and the old dog as she rounded up the chickens, was a picture Richard hadn't been aware of: it was taken that first morning after their arrival, when Jason had woken to watch the sunrise with Kent. Kent was looking out at the sunrise over the cornfield, looking relaxed and wearing his pajamas with a boot-clad foot up on the first rung of the fence he was leaning on. His glasses caught the light horribly, but it was almost an iconic picture. A Clark Kent Richard had never seen before.

_Just like the Lois I see when she's around Kent isn't a Lois Lane I'm familiar with_, he brushed away the thought and flipped to the next picture.

The next picture was simply the sunrise Kent had been viewing over the corn. It was very pretty. Lois sitting on the porch steps, just dressed, with her cup of coffee looking groggy. Lois meeting the horses, holding out a carrot to one and looking uncomfortable while Kent's eyes glinted as he watched her from behind.

Richard scowled at the next picture, one of himself as he slept on the living room couch—he'd done that a lot, his shoulder bothering him when he was conscious to feel it. Seeing the pictures now, though, he realized he had missed a lot at the farm. A lot of opportunities to bond with Jason… to win Lois back.

He sighed and flipped through the next couple of pictures without real interest. Jason had gone with Kent to a hardware store one afternoon and Jason had taken pictures out the window—most were blurry, but they all depicted a quaint little town exactly the way Richard pictured a town called 'Smallville' to be, right down to the old guys in the rocking chairs on a porch outside of the grocery store. Inside the hardware store, Jason took a picture of Kent and an auburn-haired woman, both looking happy if slightly uncomfortable to see each other. Richard smirked, seeing a bit of the Kent he was used to in that photo.

Jason seemed to have really enjoyed the Fourth of July celebrations, as he'd used up almost an entire roll on it. The day began (the photos all had date tags in the bottom corner) with a photo of Kent playing with his dog while his mother looked on from the porch; Mrs. Kent always seemed to be content—Richard wondered if she was just happy to have her son home or if she was always in a good mood. There were a few more pictures of Kent with his dog following him around, Kent doing chores in the barn.

_The guy looks so different with just a change of clothes_, Richard observed, looking over a few pictures. _More comfortable in his own skin when he's not in a suit._

Jason, Richard figured, must've liked the Kent brothers a good deal, as he'd taken a ridiculous number of pictures of them. Benji and Kent after Benji's arrival, Rick pulling up in a plume of dust while Kent and Benji stood still with tolerant frowns on their faces, Lois waving her hand around to clear the dust and Kent smirking in the corner of the shot. Rob and David and their wives, the clumps of Kents as they greeted each other.

It occurred to Richard that the angle of the whole thing was very odd, as all the adults looked so much taller from Jason's angle. Richard, as he was usually sitting off to the side in the pictures he managed to make it into, was the only one who didn't look like a giant with a rather prominent chin.

There was a series of photos from the Fourth that Lois had taken—Kent, Rick, and Jason had grouped together against Benji, David, and Rob for a game of soccer. Richard had enjoyed watching it—he made a note to himself to ask Jason if he could have one of the many snapshots to take with him; he wanted the one that was a close-up of Jason as he attempted to dribble the ball across the dusty driveway, smiling broadly at the camera held by his mother as he did so.

The next picture made Richard laugh out loud once, but the quiet of the kitchen swallowed the laugh and made it creepy, spoiling his moment. The focus of the photo—the wonky angle told that Jason had taken it—was the huge pile of fireworks in the dusk waiting for the celebrations; however, Kent was approaching in the background holding a lighter and grinning as broadly as he did in the office when he was assigned a sentimental human interest piece. Anybody from the bullpen would say that photo spelled disaster at best—loss of limb, massive fire, anything of that sort. Richard only remembered a rather pleasant fireworks display.

_So maybe Kent knows how to work fireworks. How the hell does that work? The man can't even navigate around a trashcan without making a mess._

Richard chuckled to himself, remembering Clark winking at Lois as he said, "It's okay, I was a boy scout," before he lit a few sparklers for Jason. Lois had laughed and Martha Kent had pulled her into conversation with Rick, and that had been that.

The pictures of the fireworks themselves were very blurry, more like colored dots on all black, or just plain all black. Jason didn't exactly have a night setting on his camera.

There were a few general pictures from around the farm—the chicken coup, the room Jason was sleeping in, Kent and Lois sitting on horses while Kent tried to teach Lois the basics of riding and Richard and Martha doubled over with laughter in the background—before the pictures from Jason's birthday began. Jason had run out of film in the middle of the party, but that hadn't dampened his spirits in the least.

Richard grinned to himself. Jason had had a good time in all that, at least. There was no evidence in the photos that they _weren't _simply visiting the farm on a vacation, that they were hiding from men trying to kill them.

There was only a single picture of all of them that worried Richard, even though he knew it shouldn't—that it shouldn't even matter to him, as he was going to Germany.

It was from Jason's birthday party, and, as it happened, he had been the one to take it. Jason had just opened the last of his gifts and was hugging Martha Kent. The elderly woman was grinning and squeezing him back, doing her part to play a grandmother of sorts. It wasn't that pair that concerned him, though; it was Lois and Kent. Kent had an odd look on his face. He was happy, the edges of his mouth were quirked up in a faint smile, but he also looked serious and almost sad. As though he were looking at something that was happy and sad at the same time and he wasn't able to decide what to feel. The other disconcerting bit was that Lois was looking at him, was seeing the same expression Richard was, and she was grinning one of her real grins.

Kent's look almost said 'I wish that were really her grandson she was hugging,' and Lois' look said 'he could come to be her grandson.'

Richard shuffled the pictures back into order and set them aside, picking up a flattened cardboard box and folding it back into shape. It promptly flattened again when he paused to look around for the packing tape.

_It's going to be a long day, _Richard decided, locating the tape and struggling with the box for another moment. His mind left the photos and moved on to packing.

- - -

Lois emailed the half-ass story to Perry, hoping he'd assign it to Clark when he got in. Lois had the day off by default to help Richard pack for his transfer; her partner, though, had to work.

She glanced at the clock, again, and saw, again, that it was still too early to expect Clark to drop by with Jason. He had another hour before the morning meeting and, with Clark's scatterbrained lifestyle, she suspected he'd be dropping Jason off in about forty-five minutes and then rushing out to get to the _Planet_ on time.

She smirked at his imagined antics and shut down her laptop, descending the stairs and standing at the base of them for a moment to watch her former fiancé. He had a few boxes standing in a corner and was going over the book shelves, pulling off his books (Lois had labeled all of her books before she'd moved in, claiming it had been a habit since she was young as she didn't dare admit she just wanted to have all of her stuff labeled in the event that things fell through between them) and stacking them neatly in one of the boxes. He used his right hand more than his left, his shoulder still being stiff.

"Should I start on the bedroom?" she asked, trying to sound chipper and not quite succeeding. Richard gave her an odd look over his shoulder as he put another few books into the box.

"Sure, good idea."

She would've frowned at him, but he was already facing the book shelf again, flipping open her copy of _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ and checking his movement to put it in his box when he saw it had her name in the front cover.

She picked up a roll of packing tape and a few flat boxes and turned to go up the stairs again. She had her foot on the second step when Richard's voice called her back.

"What happened to us?" she turned and looked at him curiously. "We used to be happy together, didn't we?" the look on his face and the tone of his voice screamed that he needed an answer, an honest one.

Lois stepped off the stairs and set down the boxes and tape, sitting on the bottom step and contemplating a moment. He was still holding her copy of _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, not having shelved it even though he'd turned around to do so.

"Yes. We did," Lois's response was thoughtful. "But Superman and Clark came back."

"And I was no match for the old competition?"

"It wasn't that you didn't match up, it was that it made me see what had changed, made we want to go back… It made me think about old times," she was lost in memories for a moment before she bit her lip as she looked across the room at him. She wanted to phrase it properly so that he'd understand without hurting his feelings. "I was going in twelve different directions at once and nothing matched up. I wanted the old days but I was stuck in the new days. I was restless but not unhappy…

"Clark was always my rock. It just took his not being there and me settling down enough to realize that I wanted to settle down… and Superman was a shock to _our_ relationship…"

"I understand," Richard nodded after a long pause. She looked skeptical. "Believe it or not, I think I do."

They were silent a moment.

"Seeing you these past few months… Lois, I didn't even know you had ever been different than you were," she smiled a half smirk of a smile. She had been _much_ different in the time that she'd known him than in her life before. "And then you were acting different and I didn't get why you were changing, drifting away even more than before," he wasn't smiling anymore and neither was Lois. "And then I got it. While we were at the farm—when I saw you and Clark together. The camaraderie. The simple fact that he knew exactly how you took your coffee even after five years."

"That's a little creepy, if you think about it."

"That's devotion."

Lois raised an eyebrow at him and he threw his hands up defensively, almost dropping the book. He gave her a half smile and shelved the book quickly before turning back and crossing his arms over his chest, leaning back against the bookcase and speaking slowly.

"I don't claim to know _what_ happened at Niagara Falls, but I _do_ know that whatever happened changed you guys. Maybe he realized you were in love with each other and you didn't."

"Maybe," Lois repeated after taking a moment to catch up with his nonsequitor, but her head was no longer in the conversation. She was trying to remember what had happened when they were in Niagara Falls, because she _knew_ that Richard was right, that Niagara Falls _had_ changed everything. That it had been important and that she _couldn't remember_.

"_Do you think I just fell from the sky one day and decided to save the world?"_


	29. Chapter 29

A knock on the door—Lois and Richard exchanged a look before Lois went to the door and opened it wide to reveal Clark and Jason. Clark wore his usual oversized suit for the bullpen and had his briefcase in one hand, the other rested on Jason's shoulder. Jason, with his huge backpack and yesterday's clothes still on, wouldn't meet his mother's eyes.

"What the _hell_ were you thinking?" Lois asked, standing with arms akimbo, her presence taking up the whole doorway as she glared down at her son. Jason shrunk a little, but only a little. "Running off in the dark like that. Do you _know_ how worried I was?"

"I'm sorry, Mom," Jason said in a very small voice, glancing up at his mom before looking down at his feet again. "I didn't mean to make you worry."

Lois gritted her teeth a bit and nodded. "Go up to your room and _stay there _until I get there. Understand?"

"Yes," Jason grumbled, dragging his backpack into the foyer.

"Thanks for bringing him home, Clark," she said, her look softening when she faced him, but not by much.

"Go easy on him, Lois," Clark said softly as they both watched Jason struggling with the bag. Lois raised an eyebrow at him—anybody else would've gotten the door slammed in their face for giving her suggestions on how to deal with her son. Not Clark, though. "He and I had a long talk."

"Oh, you did?" she only half believed him. "Did it cover my personally tying him to the kitchen cabinet and never letting him leave the house again if he ever does this again?" she was glaring at Jason again as he had paused in the doorway to the living room almost hopefully as Clark was standing up for him.

"No, I left th-that bit out," Clark chuckled, watching Jason haul the bag double-time into the house.

"Thought you might," Lois grinned, as Jason couldn't see her anymore. "Thank you, Clark. Really. I was about ready to call the General."

"Talk to him, Lois," he suggested after a pause. Lois raised an eyebrow. "He heard you and Richard talking last night. He thought you were sending him off to Germany with Richard or something."

"What?" Lois blanched—he'd left that part out when he'd called to let her know Jason was okay the previous evening.

"He was pretty upset," Clark shifted uneasily. "I don't know if it was because he was in his bedroom and he could hear you in the living room, or if it was because he thought you wanted him to go to Germany."

"Shit," Lois sighed, then sealed her lips tight, eyes darting to meet Clark's. "Could he hear that, do you think?"

"I would almost guarantee it," Clark smirked. Lois wanted to swat him.

"Thank you, Clark," she had a hand on the door, but then she remembered Superman's visit earlier in the morning. "And _don't_ let the Chief shaft you on the new information I emailed him on the b-o-d-y that washed up in the harbor this morning. I emailed it to you too just to be sure," she said, spelling out 'body' in the hope that, if Jason was listening in, he wouldn't pick up on the topic.

"Thanks, Lois," he seemed almost surprised that she would stick up for him. She scowled again.

"When are you going to get it into your head that I'm not out to smash you beneath my heel and ditch you?"

"Anymore," he amended, winking at her from behind thick lenses before turning and walking back toward his cab. "You're not out to smash me beneath your heel and ditch me _anymore_."

She smiled to herself before closing the door and turning, face schooled into a properly pissed off look to face her son.

"You and I are going to have a _long_ conversation, mister."

- - -

Clark arrived at the bullpen and scarcely had the moment to unpack his briefcase before Perry called him into his office and set out the information Clark had passed onto Lois as Superman that morning. The Chief went to great lengths to set everything out for him, but Clark had spent the morning mapping out the calls he would need to make, which contacts he would need to talk to about what.

A world away, Clark nodded and appeared to listen as well as he could before he made his way out of the office with hardly a dismissal and nearly flattened a tin trashcan on the way to his desk. The owner of the trashcan, the new intern from the U. of Metropolis, sent him a foul look before returning to her obituaries.

"Majorsky," the first contact on his list of calls answered. Clark smiled suavely and leaned dangerously far back in his chair.

"Bobby," Clark said, knowing that his detective friend would recognize his voice immediately.

- - -

Clark walked into Tracy's Diner with a nod to Peterson, settling in his usual booth with Henderson. It had been a long day and he knew Henderson was feeling the hours as well.

A morning in the bullpen making calls, lunch on the go with Jimmy on the way to the docks to get supplementary photographs and a few on-site interviews. He split from Jimmy after an hour, returning to the dock (now taped off as a crime scene) in the Suit to let Jimmy get some pictures and to get a few more details the police weren't handing out to the gaggle of reporters gathered at the dock begging for a quote.

Skipping dinner in favor of stopping by the mayor's office in hopes of a quote (he'd managed to secure a lunch interview for the following afternoon) on the recent resurgence of bodies washing up in the harbor—the count hadn't been so high since Superman's first week in Metropolis.

Henderson was blinking at him strangely, making Clark wonder if he had something left over in his teeth from lunch oh-so-many hours ago, or if he'd left his glasses in the cab or something. Of course, he hadn't taken a cab to get to the diner, and he'd had a plate of pasta for lunch, so it wasn't likely he had anything hanging on.

"E-evening, Chief," Clark said, shifting uncomfortably under the older man's gaze. Henderson seemed to snap out of it.

"Evening, Clark. Long day?"

"Probably not as long as yours," Clark shrugged, thanking Tracy profusely when she arrived with a tumbler of whiskey. Clark glanced around at the usual clutter of uniforms, detectives, and friends in the diner and saw that most of them had larger glasses than usual. A second body in the harbor after so short a time seemed to be getting to the law enforcement as much as it did the Man of Steel. Clark really couldn't blame them for wanting a bit more after such a day.

"There are good days and there are bad days," Henderson said, shrugging a little and downing his drink. Clark raised an eyebrow at his friend but covered his expression by taking a sip of his own drink.

"I suppose that's true," Clark nodded. Henderson's heart rate shot up. Clark watched him carefully, but all the chief did was order another drink and avoid eye contact. "What's up, Chief? You seem a little… edgy."

"Do I?" Henderson asked, nervously stirring his drink. Clark set his own drink on the table and fixed the police chief with a serious look. _Roles are certainly reversed tonight_, Clark would've chuckled—Henderson was the serious one, Clark was the nervous one.

"Yes, you d-do," he tempered his un-Clark-like look with the stutter, but Henderson didn't seem to hear it, just staring.

"Let's go for a walk," Henderson said after a long moment, eyes darting around the room at the other officers.

"S-sure," Clark said, completely thrown.

- - -

Lois sat on the bed in the bedroom she'd shared with Richard for what seemed like a lifetime. In all reality, it sort of _was_ a lifetime. But then, by that rationale, that lifetime was coming to an end. She didn't particularly like to think that anything was dying.

While Richard hadn't slept in the bed with her in many months, seeing all of his stuff—his clothes, his knick-knacks and memorabilia—gone from the room made it seem empty. And official.

She looked down at her left hand where there was no longer an engagement ring. Just a horrible tan line. She found that she missed it, if only because she was used to it.

"Things just kind of puttered out, didn't they?" Richard asked, announcing his presence in the doorway.

"How long've you been standing there?"

"Long enough to watch you fiddle with your lack of an engagement ring."

"Sorry."

He just shrugged, sitting down heavily in the armchair standing in the corner of the room. He had somehow managed to get all of his things packed and ready for shipping in a single day. They hadn't done anything else besides pack all day with short breaks for meals (take out from wherever the first menu Lois grabbed out of the drawer when the time came to order). Jason had spent the entire day in his room after Lois had chewed him out General-style, Lois and Richard checking on him randomly to make sure he was still there—not the ideal way to spend Richard and Jason's last day together.

"It's going to be weird without you here, in this house," Lois admitted.

"It's a big change," Richard nodded, glancing down at her bare finger again. Lois smiled tensely in agreement, pulling her knees up to her chest and looping her arms around them, hiding her left hand beneath her right so that he couldn't stare anymore. "It will just take getting used to."

"That goes for all of us," Lois smirked. "You'll be in _Germany_, for God's sake."

"A little different from the living room couch," he agreed. Lois smiled faintly but her eyes weren't in it.

- - -

"What's going on, Henderson?" Clark finally asked when they'd been walking for almost a half an hour. They were well away from the diner, walking in the vague direction of the _Daily Planet_, its globe rising between skyscrapers, its various spotlight illuminations from the room making it reflect in the windows of the buildings around it.

"What?" Henderson asked, seeming almost to have forgotten that he was walking with somebody else.

Clark, fed up with whatever game the chief was playing—he'd already had to let one minor car accident (minor because a broken arm was the only injury, nothing more) and a small fire in a restaurant kitchen tend to themselves. He stopped walking and faced Henderson, resisting the urge to cross his arms and give him a stern Superman look. Instead, he just put his hands in his pockets and gave him an honestly curious look straight from the cornfields of Kansas.

Henderson blinked, stopping in the darkness of the shadow of an awning outside a closed barber shop. Clark joined him, scrutinized him in the darkness without fear of the chief catching the look. Another handy trick by way of being from a different planet.

"What's going on?" Clark finally asked again. Henderson glanced around them, not seeing anything in the darkness, and continued to look nervous. Clark glanced around them as well, not seeing a soul—the buildings around them were empty as well. No human heartbeats in Earth-born human earshot—the part of town they were standing in was closed for the evening, its usual occupants at home in their classy, uptown homes.

"Are we alone?" Henderson asked, still looking nervous.

"As well as I can tell."

To his surprise, Henderson smirked.

"You can tell pretty well, too, can't you?"

"What?" Clark fought the urge to step away and trip over something that didn't exist.

"I admit, your act is admirable. Amazing, really. I didn't even suspect! Does _anybody_, really? That you know of?" Henderson waited, seeming to expect Clark to have an answer.

"W-what?" the stutter wasn't exactly faked that time.

"Answer me one thing, though," Henderson said, now smiling as though it was all a great joke that he'd finally understood after years and years of hearing it told. "How the hell do you hide the cape? I mean, it's a huge length of fabric. It's not like you can fold it up and stick it in your pocket… can you?"

Clark blinked at him. "What?"

He wasn't sure whether he was more surprised that, of all the questions somebody could possibly have after figuring out the biggest secret of his life, Henderson had asked about his _cape_, or if he was more surprised that Henderson had somehow figured it out at all. There had been enough close calls way-back-when, when he was working the Henderson case with Lois, that first big story when he was still a rookie at life in general, when it wasn't second-nature to preserve his secret tediously and vigilantly yet, when he was still learning the ropes of reporting in Metropolis. For Chris Henderson to figure out The Secret so many years down the road was just… Clark shook his head.

"No, seriously. It's the only thing I really can't figure out," Henderson was smiling, somehow enjoying the conversation that was only half taking-place. His heart rate was still faster than usual, but not so fast as it had been back at Tracy's in the booth. "The suit is skin-tight so it would fit beneath your oversized business suits, and I suppose the boots would fit inside your shoes. Just the cape… I just can't figure it out."

Clark wished he wasn't wearing the suit beneath his clothes as Henderson had described. Maybe if he hadn't been he could've pulled up a pant leg or something and reveal a sock as the only thing besides his foot in his shoe. He _was _wearing the Suit beneath his clothes though, the cape folded flat inside his shirt, the boots squished into his shoes (which would be much too big if he were to ever just wear them and his socks).

Henderson was waiting for an answer with a smile on his face, no idea of the shock he'd given Clark.

"W-what?" Clark asked again, wondering idly if it was even worth the time to try and preserve his identity. Henderson was the police chief. He would've investigated the hell out of any lead, checked up on all his facts before he made any accusations. He was like Lois that way, or maybe Lois was like a police officer that way.

"C'mon, Kent," Henderson chuckled, but it was a nervous chuckle. Clark realized the man was probably either suddenly doubting himself or doubting the familiarity implied in the question. He wasn't sure which he preferred.

"Chief, I-I d-don't know w-wha—"

Henderson drew his weapon and fired a single round straight into Clark's chest. Clark blinked, watching the bullet soar toward him. He had two options—let it hit him, or move out of the way. His cover would be torn to threads either way.

_Why is it that people always want to prove it to me that I'm Superman by shooting me??_

A ghost of a smirk played across his lips for a flash of a second, so brief the chief wouldn't even see it.

When the bullet hit him, square in the sternum, Clark clutched at his chest (it would seem that he was clutching at a wound, but he was really just catching the bullet before it could go through his shirt or rebound back at Henderson), made a wheezing, breathy sound, and collapsed to the sidewalk at the base of the barber shop.

"Oh, God," Henderson said, putting the gun in its holster and rushing forward to Clark's collapsed figure. For all visual purposes, Clark was breathing shallowly, probably bleeding out—the heavy shadows made it hard for the chief to tell. "Kent? _Kent_?"

Clark waited until the chief was crouched at his side, feeling for a pulse, before he opened his eyes and sat up. Henderson was gaping, heart beating out of his chest.

Clark smirked, glasses glinting in the sliver of moonlight that made it down to where he sat. "Serves you right," he said as though admonishing a child. He got to his feet smoothly, the ability to fly aiding that more than a little. Henderson stayed crouched where he was, blinking up at Clark and trying to remember to breath. "What if I wasn't really Superman? How would you explain that?" he frowned now, crossing his arms over his chest in the classic Superman pose, setting his jaw. The glasses would throw off the picture, but the point would still be made. "Metropolis Chief of Police Shoots _Planet_ Reporter for Absolutely No Reason, I can see the headline now. Written by a vindictive partner of the dead notorious for her piece calling out _Superman_ for God's sake, Henderson. You're going to have to explain why you discharged your weapon in the first place, too."

Henderson blinked.

Clark sighed, dropping his arms and holding the bullet up to the light, not that it made any real difference to him. He'd caught the bullet before it hit him, but it had just impacted his hand instead of his chest and was still more than a little crunched. Carefully, he reshaped the bullet, pushing his glasses up his forehead a bit so that he could soften the metal with heat vision.

Henderson continued to blink, gaping.

**A/N: Hey, thanks to everybody for sticking with me through this so long; the main plot points are going to be really picking up here in the next few chapters, so your patience will be rewarded (hopefully)!!**

**A question for any who feel like answering it: would you like/ would you read other stories from this plotline, do you think? If I were to write the story of the Henderson murders I've been referring back to or other stories from before Clark left for Krypton, about Bruce and Clark's meeting or Lois and Clark's early partnership or something, would anybody be interested?? I suppose it would be kind of expanding the story into its own 'universe' type of thing-- I'm just wondering if there's any interest before I go posting things, because I've already written a bit down just to keep the stories straight in this one.**

**Thanks for reading-- hopefully I'm still entertaining you :)**


	30. Chapter 30

**A big thanks to everybody who reviewed that last chapter with your opinions (esp. the anonymous ones that I wasn't able to reply to)-- I appreciate it!**

Lois rolled out of bed on the day Richard would be leaving the country and looked dismally at the calendar. She was expected back at work, fiancé or not, and Jason's Summer Spectrum activities group began that afternoon. It was more-or-less a summer daycare program for kids that attended Metropolis Private. Jason would be joining his classmates for different activities every day of the work week, beginning with a day in Centennial Park with a picnic lunch.

A moment of thought led Lois to a good plan of action, and she stumbled out of bed toward the shower.

Two cups of coffee and a piece of toast later, Lois was packing Jason a sack lunch and urging him to quickly get his shorts and t-shirt on, locate his shoes, all that stuff. Richard was loading his luggage into the trunk of the car—he'd FedExed most of his stuff the previous evening, leaving some clothes and other immediate necessities to be brought along on his flight—and double-checking everything. He'd be sleeping on Hans' couch in Berlin until he found a place for himself; it certainly wasn't something he was looking forward to.

"You have ten minutes 'til we're leaving!" Lois shouted after Jason as he went pounding up the stairs in search of socks.

"I know!" Jason called back over his shoulder. He wasn't exactly happy with her over the shouting the previous day, nor his first grounding. He would be going to Summer Spectrum, going to the bullpen when that finished, then going to his room until dinner and back after. She had gone through his room, taken out his Gameboy Color, CD player, his toy box. He was limited to sitting on his bed and coloring, or expanding his broadening reading ability.

All things considered, Lois figured he was handling the whole thing rather well. Better than her—she was still furious with him; torn between keeping him by her side every moment of the day out of worry, and cussing him out like an uncooperative source for making her worry. She'd never thought she could be so conflicted, never even thought of getting in a position to be so conflicted.

_God, I'm turning into the General, _she sighed. Tough love was the General's game—lots of grounding and drilling to get the lessons learned.

It had seemed as though a weight had lifted off of Jason's shoulders when he'd learned he wasn't being shipped off to Germany with the rest of Richard's things, though. Again, Lois regretted the therapy bill this portion of his childhood was sure to cause later in life.

Shaking her head, Lois returned to the paper bag in front of her and began packing it full of the sandwich and snacks she'd brought precisely for the purpose of putting Jason on a sugar-high when it was somebody else's duty to look after him. In some back recess of her brain she hoped that he would take his sugary favorites in his lunch as a sign that she still loved him even though she was mad as hell with him at the moment. She had learned to read into the General's little motions like that well before her teenage years (when those little motions eventually stopped).

_God. I _am _turning into the General! _Biting her lip, she folded over the opening of the brown paper sack and stapled it the way her mother had done when she was a little girl.

She sighed again and her thoughts drifted to the goodbye Jason and Richard had shared over breakfast and in the extra half hour between the morning meal and when they both needed to be getting ready for their days. She had left them alone, not wanting to be in the way, but she had kept close because she didn't want to miss it. Post cards were promised, phone calls every couple of weeks—Richard assured Jason he wasn't completely stepping out of his life, that he still loved him even though he wasn't going to be around. There had even been talk of a trip to visit him in Germany next summer if Jason was a good boy, no more of that running away business.

Lois could be as happy with the direction her life was angling at as she was and still be sad to be splitting the pair of them up. Richard truly was a good man, a good father. While he'd told her on their first date (before she'd known she was pregnant) that he didn't see himself as the fathering type, and Lois would readily admit that she hadn't thought she was the mothering type either. As it happened, Lois wouldn't want her life to have gone any differently, unplanned pregnancy or not. Richard… she wasn't sure. He was a free spirit at the base of things, certainly, but he loved Jason, too. He was very different from the General that way.

Lois and Richard had had their own goodbye the previous evening. It had been awkward and simple. They refused to part on bad terms for Jason's sake, but Richard's "I hope you and Clark are very happy together" had made her want to hit him, but the guilt had kept her fists at her sides.

"You look sad, Mommy," Jason said, appearing at her elbow, socks and shoes on properly, hair combed, teeth brushed. Ready to go.

"I'm okay, munchkin," she flashed him a grin and he grinned back—she realized it was probably not good for the whole punishing thing to be calling him 'munchkin' and smiling.

"Can I watch TV until it's time to go?"

_Point proven._

"No. You're grounded—no TV."

Jason slouched off, obviously hoping she had forgotten. _No such luck, little man._

- - -

Clark's morning began suddenly, the crunching sound of a car crash a few streets down waking him abruptly. He was in the Suit and looking suave as ever before he realized he had woken up.

After a half-an-hour's worth of serious conversation with Henderson under the awning outside a random barber shop, Clark had had to fly off to deal with the aftermath of a violent storm in western Argentina. That half-an-hour's worth of talk had given Clark plenty to think on while he pulled tree limbs off of cars and vaporized flash-floodwaters. He had returned to Metropolis so late into the night that it was early in the morning, caught a few hours of sleep, then jumped back into action.

The world had been holding its breath for no apparent reason, but it was now releasing. The hypothetical expelled air came in the form of easily-avoidable car crashes, raging seasonal storms, construction accidents, and a surprisingly active volcano near Japan.

And yet Clark somehow managed to keep his breakfast appointment with Lois, not an early-morning breakfast, just a regular-morning breakfast. The employees of the Coffee Shoppe seemed to appreciate it, as donuts and coffee were easier to set out than preparing the whole-shebang that would've been asked for if the pair of journalists would've had time to eat it.

"Morning," Lois said, sounding gruff and altogether like herself when he sat down across from her at their usual table. She looked calmer than he'd expected her to be so soon after Jason's defection, particularly toward the man to whom her son had run, and on the day that her former fiancé was leaving the country.

And not a hint of hazelnut in her coffee.

"Good morning, Lois," he said with a shadow of his normal cheer. Even if recent events in their lives (and around the world) didn't have her a bit somber, they were positively wearing him out.

"Morning, Mister Kent," the waitress—her nametag read Betty but Clark was sure her name was Stacy—said, setting down the coffee and donut he'd ordered as he walked in.

"Thank you," he said, not venturing to add her name on the off-chance that the nametag was right.

For a moment, Lois and Clark sat in silence and ate their donuts. Neither was particularly hungry, but they ate anyway.

"I saw the article about that body in the harbor," Lois said, tapping the morning edition of the _Planet_ that sat between them. Lois had arrived early so that she could catch up on what she'd missed in the bullpen the previous day. "You didn't have to put my name in the byline. I only got a supplemental interview, at best."

"You had the entire article outlined, Lois," Clark raised an eyebrow at her. She had practically written the article and included instructions for whom to call to fill in the gaps. "And you got an interview before the chief was even aware there was a story."

"So? You do that for me all the time."

"Not _all_ the time," Clark amended, but Lois arched her eyebrow and he knew there was no arguing. "Anyway, the chief said to put your name in the byline, so I did."

"Oh did he now?"

"Yes."

"You're lying, Clark," she mock-glared at him.

"I'm not!"

"You are. I can tell."

"How?" Clark asked—he had been fooling her for _years_ and highly doubted she could truly read him when he was telling one of his lies-that-was-supposed-to-be-Clark-Kent's-truth, as opposed to one of his lies-that-the-Kent-Persona-is-trying-not-to-get-caught-telling.

"You do this thing with your chin," Lois said, trying to imitate it and not quite succeeding. Clark burst out laughing.

"I do not look like that. Ever."

"Well, I can't do it. But you _do _do this thing with your chin," she pouted a little. "I wouldn't want you to know what it looks like, anyway. Then you would stop doing it and I'd never be able to tell."

They shared a smile as Clark popped the last of his donut into his mouth. Lois turned contemplative after a moment, holding onto her coffee cup and staring into it absentmindedly. Clark waited patiently, waiting for her mind to clear, but it didn't.

"Earth to Lois…? You in there?"

"Yeah, sorry," she jerked back to the world of right and smiled at him, finishing off her coffee in a gulp and sitting more squarely at the table.

"How'd things go with Richard this morning?" Clark asked tentatively, noting that the square set to her shoulders drooped ever so slightly at the mention of him.

"Well," she said after a moment. "They went well. He and I dropped Jason off at his Summer Spectrum thing, then I drove him to the airport. It was really anticlimactic, actually. He just sort of got out of the car, got his luggage out of the back, and went into the airport."

"I suppose that's good, though," Clark said after another moment, wishing he hadn't brought it up. Lois just shrugged.

"It's over, he's gone. I'm worried how Jason's going to take it, though," she began worrying her thumb nail between her teeth. "I know he didn't want to go to Germany, what with the whole running away thing, but… He'll miss Richard, I know he will. And he's grounded. It sucks—I'm trying to punish him at one of the times that I'm sure he'll need me around. Or at least I'll need him around. It's a big empty house."

Clark didn't know what to say. She wasn't making eye contact, which meant she was being brutally honest, and her thumb nail was just about as short as it could get without bleeding cuticles.

On an impulse—for the sake of her nail bed, he told himself—he reached across the table and took her hand out of her mouth, giving it a squeeze and kissing the back of it.

"I'm always around if you need me," he assured her, squeezing her hand one more time before releasing it. She gave him a thankful but thoughtful look, drawing her hand into her lap after he'd let go and sitting quietly for a moment and looking at her coffee cup. Clark felt the awkwardness settle over their table for a moment, only to be broken by Stacy/Betty bringing their checks.

"So," Lois said in that determined voice she always used when she was changing the subject, and don't he dare try to stop her. "We've got half an hour 'til the morning meeting. Catch me up on this story we're working on."

Glad for the change for once, Clark dug out his notes and spent the cab ride and the elevator ride going over them with her. There wasn't much—it was an open-and-close story, but there was one bit he wanted to follow up, that being the kryptonite. "I don't know if the chief will let us follow-up on it, but we might as well try," he concluded.

"I doubt he will. I'm liable to wring somebody's neck if I ever trail it to its source," Lois admitted, gritting her teeth and squeezing her to-go coffee cup like it was the neck she'd like to compress. Clark chuckled, glad that she cared at least that much about his alter-ego, severed ties or not.

Clark was distracted all through the morning meeting by the on-goings in the city beyond the _Planet_. The stillness was certainly gone. Not only was the city itself bumping into each other at every corner—literally or not, still problematic—but, according to the international news report, the world itself was just plain having a bad day.

"Kent," Perry finally half-barked, half-sighed—a tone only he was able to pull off properly. "Go home.'

"What?" Clark snapped out of another uneasy trance—there was a raging fire down the street from the Lounge, the bar Mrs. Ganelon had suggested they meet at after he and Lois had returned from Smallville' the fire fighters were dealing with it, but a flash of super-breath and somebody impervious to fire to get the last few people out would certainly be beneficial.

"Go home," Perry instructed again, more slowly as though that was going to help. Clark still looked bemused—and it was actually an honest look of bemusement, not the usual act. "Something is obviously on your mind. Are you sick? Your mom okay? Something else going on?"

"Er, n-no, sir," Clark raised his eyebrows.

"Fine; you don't have to tell me. Just get on out of here. Get some rest, have a beer—whatever you need to do. Just break yourself out of this funk and be back here tomorrow."

"B-but Chief…!"

"No buts, Clark. Get outta here," he stood at the head of the table, waiting for Clark to gather his things and leave.

"Here," Clark said, sliding his folder of leads on the kryptonite over to Lois, who was sitting next to him as she had, as usual, been the one to secure them both chairs for the meeting. He tapped the post-it note on top, making sure she saw his interview scheduled with the mayor before he gathered his things. She nodded and he left, nodding to Perry once and generally trying not to be noticed as he organized things at his desk before hurrying out.

The fire was put out in a matter of seconds. It wasn't an uncontrollable blaze by any means, but it was still a fire.

Other than the mayhem occurring all over the world, it was a rather nice afternoon. Hours and hours passed easily as Clark flew all over the planet, helping out and soaking up sunshine above the clouds between rescues.

Just after noon, he flew over Centennial Park to see how Jason was doing. Jason and his Summer Spectrum group were sitting in a little clump by a stand of trees eating lunch. Jason looked to be having fun, which made Clark smile.

He hovered above the clouds for awhile, gladly absorbing the sunlight and x-raying through the clouds to watch the kids playing. He felt oddly like a stalker even though he knew his eyes weren't exactly unwelcome.

The world seemed to be inhaling again for the moment, leaving Clark to enjoy a moment of peace not so far from his son. Then the world, or at least Metropolis, was struck in the proverbial gut and the air went whooshing out.

Across the street from the stand of trees near where Jason and his group were picnicking was a currency exchange office for tourists and the like. Four armed men had quietly robbed the exchange office and made their way out to the street—they weren't exactly inconspicuous, though, wearing all black and ski-masks in the middle of the bright, sunny afternoon.

It was almost as though they'd wanted to get caught, but Clark couldn't let that stop him from intervening.

The clerk in the exchange office was on the phone with M.P.D. and a quick tune of his ears revealed dispatch sending two panda cars in a hurry. The robbers weren't making an easy escape of things, though—they ran right out across the street, nearly getting hit by the oncoming traffic. Horns blared (which was what had caught Clark's attention) and brakes screeched. There was a mild fender-bender and a car up a bit on the sidewalk, and the four robbers were running full-tilt into the park.

Clark looked across the park for an escape vehicle of some sort that they could be headed to but saw nothing.

If he had learned one thing from his latest and most notable encounter with Lex Luthor, it was to avoid kryptonite islands when Luthor was on the loose. Another thing that had really struck home was to look before he leapt.

He scanned the robbers, seeing that they'd stolen about two thousand in U.S. dollars and another one thousand in Euros. Not even that great of a bounty, really. Each robber had a loaded semiautomatic in his hand—they were all male—and a second clip that had a lead coating.

_Kryptonite bullets?_ he wondered, but he didn't have time to worry about it. The robbers exited the other side of the stand of trees, nearly tripping over the accumulated five and six year olds picnicking, shooting their guns off into the air.

The screams of the children drew even more attention and others in the park began panicking at the sight of the masked gunmen.

Whoever they were, they were very bad at this.

Clark swooped down as fast as he dared, which was pretty darn fast, and scooped one masked man up under the armpits. The folio of bills he had been carrying fell to the ground and the man let out a surprised 'humph!'

"Superman!" the children yelled, excited, relieved.

"Superman!" one of the robbers exclaimed, surprised, predatory. Clark didn't like the tone.

Instead of dwelling on it, Clark disarmed the robber he'd grabbed and plopped him in the highest Y of a tall tree he found. The man wouldn't be able to move from the spot without breaking off weaker branches and falling out of the tree. The gun was easily turned into a shiny disc about the size of a Frisbee, though much heavier.

He'd expected the three remaining robbers to begin running, but they began shooting instead, discharging bullets in all directions. They imbedded themselves in trees, the ground. A few of them went up, and then Clark had to go to work—they came down very close to where the children were gathered.

Clark darted around above the Summer Spectrum group, Jason included, standing in the fringe to one side, catching the bullets as they dropped.

The robbers reloaded, but they staggered it in such a way that Clark couldn't rush one of them as he reloaded because the others were shooting directly at the kids instead of up.

The new bullets were kryptonite bullets. The real stuff.

He felt it the moment the new clips were inserted into the guns, a twinge of nausea and the taste of bile at the back of his throat. He glanced at Jason and could tell that the boy could feel it as well, if not so acutely—Lois had said he hadn't had any reaction on Luthor's boat. Maybe his reaction would increase as his powers developed? Clark couldn't spare the time to think about it.

The police sirens were very close. Back-up had almost arrived.

The robbers began firing at the children again. Clark darted forward—if the bullets were to hit him, they would bite into him just like a regular bullet would bite into a regular man. But there wasn't so much kryptonite that it was draining him of his abilities. Flight was the first to go and stubborn about coming back, though it usually wasn't the last back. He'd have to run—speed wouldn't leave him for awhile. His invulnerability was shaky at best when exposed to _any_ amount of kryptonite, but he'd be able to catch the bullets if he was quick enough and careful enough.

The bullets stung, almost burned, when they touched his skin. He felt his palms blistering. He caught each bullet and launched it at one of the thicker trees on the rim of the cluster of trees, imbedding them a few inches into the wood.

All three of them were firing at once, aiming for the children.

_What the hell kind of robbers are these guys?_ Clark wondered to himself, dashing to catch one bullet aimed for a little girl with pigtails, then doubling back at twice the speed as he tossed the first bullet so that he'd be able to catch a second bullet fired at the same time at a boy still holding onto his peanut butter sandwich.

The children were screaming in terror, clustering back farther from the robbers, but the robbers moved forward to keep them in ridiculously close range.

He was fairly certain they'd nearly unloaded their kryptonite clips when one of the robbers fired directly at Jason.

Jason had drifted farther from the main group as the shooting continued, avoiding the main spread of bullets. The masked man fired the gun; there was one more gunshot, and then stillness.

It almost seemed to move in slow motion, though that was how everything looked when Clark moved in super-speed.

He leapt to the side, reaching out and catching the bullet about a foot from Jason's forehead. His head jerked to the side to glare at the man who'd fired the bullet; if he hadn't been holding kryptonite, the swirling red glow in his eyes would've been a blast of heat vision that probably would've melted his flesh.

It took a moment to realize that he'd been shot.

The second bang he'd heard after he'd begun moving to grab the bullet headed toward Jason had been fired by another one of the robbers, its purpose to hit _him_, not one of the kids.

He realized, belatedly, that that had probably been the purpose of the entire operation. The Boss had been flooding Metropolis with kryptonite for months, after all, fake and real—it _had_ to have made it into hands willing to do something with it at some point.

_So it's today, then_.

The bullet tore through what would have been the fleshy part under his left arm if he'd been a normal human being. Of course, he wasn't a normal human being. He was a human being born on a planet with a red sun and living on a planet orbiting a yellow sun, which meant, whether he liked it or not, he was made of muscle and had no fleshy underside of his arm to speak of.

The bullet ripped through the muscle of his arm, missing the bone by a centimeter and coming out the other side to land a few yards back. It was glowing green, being so close to him and coated in his blood. The kryptonian cells, organic and mineral, were recognizing each other, acknowledging each other—for the kryptonite that meant glowing, for Clark it meant experiencing pain. And then there was the pain of the gunshot.

His fist tightened around the kryptonite in his right hand reflexively. If it was any other substance it would've turned to dust in his fist. It was kryptonite, though—it burned his palm; he could hear his flesh hissing.

He dropped the bullet to the grass—his palm was coated in ugly blisters filled with blood and pus. It was nasty and easily visible to the photographers that had come out of nowhere. None of the gathered crowd dared intervene, but they were certainly documenting everything.

_I hope Jimmy's getting some good photos_, Clark thought, absurdly, before he began to move again.

He wasn't in direct contact with the kryptonite anymore, so the pain was less than it had been. There was a hole in his arm, though.

He scanned the guns of the three robbers facing him. One had three kryptonite bullets left, one had one, the other was empty—the empty one was the one that had shot at Jason.

Clark became a blur of blue and red. He wasn't as fast as he normally was, with an open wound the kryptonite nearby had a greater affect on him; and there was the simple fact that he was hurt. Every movement jarred his arm, but he ignored it.

The two bullets that had been on the grass were quickly imbedded in the tree, one leaving a bloody trail in the wood as it pushed through. The man who'd shot at Jason found himself tossed into a tree rather roughly; his gun shaped into a second metallic disc and flung into the tree with all the kryptonite, sticking half-in-half-out and shining malevolently.

The remaining robbers didn't seem to like what was happening—they had planned to make a fatal shot, not a flesh wound.

The man with the single shot left shot it at Jason; it required only a flick of his wrist from where he'd been aiming at Clark a moment ago. Clark caught that bullet as well, a good yard and a half in front of his son, his entire body between the bullet and the boy even as his blistered hand clasped the kryptonite bullet. He flung it into the tree and then took the gun in the forehead. It would leave a rather nice bruise, but it didn't leave him concussed as it would a normal man.

The gun bounced off and landed heavily on the grass. The man who'd thrown it was running in the opposite direction, but was quickly slowed by members of the press, which lightened Clark's heart a bit to see.

The police arrived in a flaring of horn and flashing of lights, pulling up onto the grass and making a bit of a blockade with their cars where there was a gap in the crowd. The officers got out and aimed their weapons at the remaining robber. He was pointing his gun, and his remaining three kryptonite bullets, at Clark. Clark wanted nothing better than to stride across the distance, take the bullets if they were shot at him, and beat the crap out of the guy. It was a sunny day. He'd be fine so long as no vital organ was hit and the bullet stuck…

"Can't say I've ever been a hostage before," Clark said, making a point to sound a bit raspy, as though the kryptonite and the wound were draining him more than they were. He recognized two of the officers behind their squad car to be the same pair that had been there when he'd left the hospital, the two that knew about his mother.

_Could be considered poetic_, Clark mused, but his mind was in the situation. His body was directly between Jason and the robber; he didn't intend on moving. _Don't these guys have orders to preserve Jason for their experiments, anyway? … or maybe they're not part of the big plan. If any of these guys somehow get out of this, the Boss is going to rip them to shreds._

One of the officers from a third squad car that had parked on the street made his way through the crowd and took the man that had been restrained by the press into custody. The man didn't put up much of a fuss, his eyes locked where every other eye in the vicinity was.

Slowly, Clark began walking forward, dragging his steps ever so slightly. The crowd drew a collective, worried breath. The officers tensed. The robber's trigger finger tightened, more of a twitch.

BANG

Clark caught the first bullet and tossed it over his shoulder, imbedding it in the same tree again without a glance behind him.

Another step forward, less dragging than the first one.

BANG

The second bullet was harder to catch because it was closer, but he made it look as nonchalant as the first.

Another step.

BANG

Clark caught the final bullet and held it out in his left palm. The palm was a giant bruise from catching the other bullets, was beginning to blister angrily in response to the kryptonite, but the gesture held its own significance. He looked directly at the robber—he had bland gray eyes, the only part of his face visible with the ski mask on and Clark could no longer x-ray through the fabric to see the rest of his face—and held in a smirk at the way the man's eyes widened.

He threw the bullet to the side. It was an intimidating gesture, would be seen as such. He only did it because he didn't have the strength to throw it into the tree, nor the accuracy. The world was beginning to swim before his eyes.

An ambulance screeched onto the scene, EMTs—Clark recognized Jim Harris, the man who had helped he, Lois, Richard, and Jason disappear to Gotham—climbed out and froze, watching the scene from a fair distance off.

Aware that every eye in the area, and many of those in office buildings around Metropolis as local channel 9 had a cameraman on scene, was on him, waiting for his next move, he took the gun from the robber, ignoring the throbbing pain the blisters sent shooting up his arm when they touched the metal. His face was carefully held in check, stern with a touch of anger, strength and authority; no pain, no ferocity. None of the sorrow that he felt.

None of the children should have had to experience that—they were just trying to enjoy their summer. _Jason_ shouldn't have had to experience that, to add another traumatic event to his growing repertoire.

With quick, sharp movements, he disassembled the gun, letting the parts drop heavily at his feet.

"Was this a distraction or a poor attempt at assassination?" he asked levelly, his voice just a little gravelly from the pain and from his anger. The man stiffened. "An attempt at an assassination, then," he half-smirked. _If it were a distraction, he would be a better actor. The Boss would've sent somebody who could actually manage it—not these guys. _He looked down at the last bit of gun held in his hand; the serial number hadn't even been filed off. He almost pitied the bad excuses for criminals.

The crowd was waiting for something more; the police officers were relaxing a bit, coming out from behind their cars.

"Good job," Clark quipped sarcastically, raising an eyebrow slightly. _And now I'm insulting people. What a lovely day to be a member of the press_.

Only a few people chuckled, and nervously at that. The robber scowled.

Clark stepped back and people seemed to sense that it was over. The crowd let a collective sigh of relief, the Summer Spectrum staff swooped down on the kids and checked them all over; Jason was scooped away by a tall girl in flip flops before they could even share a look. The press pressed forward, photographers seeking a good shot, journalists looking for a good quote and that inside view to later be described in their articles.

He found himself dragged away to the side by none other than Henderson, the chief gripping his right elbow hard to get him to follow. The ground seemed to roll beneath his feet, but Clark managed to stay upright until he was shoved down to sit on the open back of the ambulance. The doors were situated in such a way that the press could see nothing but, perhaps, his boots.

"Superman, I need you to look straight ahead," Jim Harris' voice instructed, and Clark did as he was told. He hated doctors and he hated being examined, but even he knew when he needed it. A bright light flashed in first one, then the other of his eyes. As usual, he only registered that it was bright, there was no pain accompanied with it as there was with the average Earth man.

Harris went through various other tests, attempting to cut away the sleeve of his uniform to treat the bullet wound but finding it impossible. "Too far from kryptonite for that to work," Clark informed him, sounding a bit out-of-it even to his own ears.

Harris harrumphed and did what he could by peeling the sturdy cloth back away. The antiseptics stung, but Clark didn't complain—he wasn't sure if he'd need them or not, but he'd rather be safe than sorry.

"Do you ever take this suit off?" Harris asked. Henderson was hovering nearby, eyes darting all over as he shifted from foot to foot.

"Yeah," Clark almost chuckled at the absurdity of the question before he realized the old EMT wouldn't know any better.

"Hm."

_Yes, that's a helpful observation_, Clark thought, but said nothing.

Harris attempted to put a tourniquet on above the bullet wound, but Clark's invulnerability had returned to his uninjured places and the flesh turned to steel when any sort of real pressure was applied.

"This is ridiculous," Harris muttered under his breath. Clark agreed, but again remained silent. After another moment of trying to find a way to get his arm properly bandaged, Harris finally stepped back and dug around in a bag stuck beneath one of the seats in the ambulance. "Put these on," he instructed, holding up a pair of blue scrubs.

Clark wasn't sure whether he should laugh or raise an eyebrow. He settled for raising the eyebrow, as laughing would involve movement that would probably jar his arm. Harris returned the look with one of his own that reminded Clark so much of Lois that he did as he was asked.

Harris closed him into the ambulance to give him some privacy, leaving Clark in a very small space with sore hands and an achy arm to remove the skin-tight suit. It felt like it took forever, and Clark was sure they could hear his hissing breath every so often when he had to move his arm just so to get the shirt-portion of the Suit off of his torso.

He tapped the door once when he was ready and Harris opened the door a little tentatively. Clark sat back down on the edge of the back, keeping still while the EMT rolled the left sleeve back over his shoulder as far as it would go and began applying bandages, wrapping his arm as tightly as he could without triggering the invulnerability.

Clark was aware of numerous reporters and others gasping and remarking on seeing the Man of Steel's bare feet, his legs clad in scrubs. He figured they would have a bit of a view of his face through the tinted window—he'd made sure his spit curl was securely hanging over his forehead before knocking on the door for just that reason.

Clark held his hands up and still, trying not to wince as Harris smeared his hands with antiseptic ointments and other foul-smelling creams before applying more bandages, tutting to himself as he worked. If his hands didn't sting so badly Clark would've chuckled.

Hands all wrapped up, Clark thought he was done, but Harris pulled a sling out of nowhere and settled Clark's left arm into it. Sufficiently bandaged and immobilized, Clark grabbed his boots and painstakingly put them on his feet using just his one hand. Harris looked as though he'd like to offer help but didn't feel it would be appropriate.

Once his boots were on, Clark looked up and saw Henderson approaching the back of the ambulance again, looking satisfied with himself. He was about to ask what had been done with the robbers when Harris backed off from where he'd been fiddling with the sling's neck strap and nodded to himself.

"I think that's all I can do for you, sir," the EMT said, frowning at the bandages on his hands.

"Thank you," Clark said in his deep, reassuring Superman voice.

"If I may make a suggestion," Harris started, slightly unsure; Clark nodded, waiting to hear what the first medical professional to treat him and speak to him afterwards had to say; "I think it would be best if you kept those bandages on tonight. Since you get your… powers? from the sun, it would probably be a good idea to get as much sunlight as possible this afternoon and then directly on the wounds tomorrow morning."

"I'll do that, thanks for the advice," Clark said, giving the man a crooked grin—"I'd shake your hand, but, at the moment, I'm not sure that'd be so good of an idea."

"Probably not, sir."

"Thank you, though. I appreciate it."

"Not at all, sir."

Clark wished he would stop calling him 'sir,' but didn't say anything, turning to Henderson instead as he looked like he had something he wanted to say.

"May I offer you a ride, Superman?"

"Yes, thank you, Chief," Clark smiled, reaching over and grabbing the suit and cape from where he'd left it inside the ambulance, making sure that the hidden pockets where his street clothes and cell phones were stored weren't about to lose their contents, and followed Henderson to his car.

Clark was sure he was quite a sight to see—and that he would be seeing quite a bit of it in the next few days—as he made his way from the back of the ambulance to Henderson's car not so far away. He was wearing the blue scrubs, the pants scrunched up at his knees to accommodate the boots, slipping down in some places and not in others. His arm was in a sling; his hands were bandaged to the point that he could hardly move them. He was sure he looked like crap in general as well, as kryptonite exposure tended to make him look like he had a bad flu, and the lack of invulnerability when he'd been moving as fast as he had had left red splotches of wind-burn on his cheeks.

He nodded once stoically to the photographers before climbing into the back seat of Henderson's car, glad for the near-opaque tint to the windows in back. He would've fit more comfortably in the front, but he wouldn't have been able to change into street clothes as easily.

"Hi," Jason said the moment the door closed behind Clark and Henderson. The chief's satisfied look suddenly made sense and Clark couldn't have been more thankful.

"Hi," he said dumbly back, looking down at the small boy tucked between the front passenger seat and the back seat, his back against the door—so that he wouldn't have a shadow in the windows.

"Are you okay?"

"I will be, the doctor back there took good care of me."

"Good," Jason said, sliding up onto the seat to his dad, keeping his head down so that he still wouldn't be seen. Henderson glanced at them in the rear-view mirror and pretended not to be surprised to see Superman and Lois Lane's son looking so familiar together—Clark smirked softly to himself, realizing that the chief had merely thought Jason would have a passing familiarity with the Man of Steel as his mother interviewed him. "I don't like it when the bad guys hurt you."

"Neither do I, Jase," Clark chuckled, but it was an honest enough statement.

Henderson drove around for awhile, merging into the rest of traffic and then losing the media tail. Clark managed to change into his street clothes, handing Jason his belt and glasses to hold onto while he fought with his other garments. Jason found that mildly amusing, his giggles lightening the overall mood in the car wonderfully.

Once he was dressed properly and the sling was back in place, Clark held Jason close to his side. Jason didn't seem to mind, even burrowing into his ribs a bit. All Clark kept seeing in his mind's eye was the robber taking aim and shooting at his son, and it made him hold onto his boy a little tighter.


	31. Chapter 31

Lois walked out of her lunch with the mayor feeling downright pleased with herself. Over the course of the meal she'd gotten the poor bastard to fess up to his Superman fanboy status, and get more than a few good quotes for the article Clark had begun the previous evening. Not only that, but the fruit salad that was served with their lunch had been downright delicious.

Her good mood lasted the entire cab ride back to the _Planet_, and promptly vanished when Jimmy pounced on her, grinning madly.

"I can't believe it, Lois—look what I got at the park!"

That phrase in itself automatically brought a frown to her face; the last time he'd gotten excited about a picture he'd taken at the park it had been of a little girl and her family enjoying ice creams on a sunny day. The little girl had turned out to be the daughter of one of the biggest drug lords in Metropolis, the last remainder of Lex Luthor's monopoly on organized crime. Said drug dealer had promptly been arrested as soon as the innocent photograph had been published as part of Jimmy's 'Scenes from Metropolis' yearly photo-spread and jailed for life, his girlfriend disappeared into the wind during the arrest, and the daughter was put in foster care. The drug dealer's friends had banded together, kidnapped Jimmy, and beaten the crap out of him. If Superman hadn't arrived when he had, Jimmy probably would've died.

Suffice to say, Jimmy avoided the park when he could help it.

"What did you get, Jim?" Lois asked warily, stepping closer to look at the digital display on his camera that he was holding out to her.

They went through picture after picture of the events of the afternoon at the park. It was all Lois could do not to run from the bullpen to the park in search of her son and Superman.

Jimmy had arrived part of the way through the confrontation; his pictures began when Superman was catching kryptonite bullets, just greenish blurs, before they could hit a group of children. He had flipped through three pictures before Lois realized the children were familiar faces from Jason's Summer Spectrum group.

"And there's Jason," Jimmy said nonchalantly—it was a few hours removed from the event and Jimmy had already progressed from horrified to properly impressed with the whole thing. "Look at Superman's face!"

Lois did, and she saw in it exactly what was lacking in Jimmy's tone of voice. Kal-El looked terrifying. He was pale, almost as pale as he'd been when she'd pulled him out of the ocean with a kryptonite shiv in his side, and both of his hands had angry purple bruises, visible even at the distance, on across his palms. He was glaring to one side of the frame where Lois assumed the shooter stood; something behind his eyes was glowing red. He was furious. Lois had never seen him so furious in the entire time that she'd known him.

Just looking at him in that picture, seeing him filled with such real, human emotion—she could see plainly that he'd put himself between the gunman and Jason, it was the most obvious paternal tell he could allow himself—made her feel closer to him than she'd felt since he returned from his journey to Krypton. In that picture, to her, he was the father of her son, defending their son, angry, _furious_, with the person who had put Jason in harm's way.

Even without knowing the boy half-hidden behind the Man of Steel was the Man of Steel's son, the photograph was sure to win awards.

"There's more," Jimmy said, positively twitching. The next photographs documented Superman's triumph over the masked gunmen in black. The crowd of press and other onlookers detained one of them in an almost comical photograph; Jimmy must've been standing just to one side of the group that had stopped the man from running. Superman disassembled the last man standing's gun, the look on his face clearly stating that the gunman was next. But he wasn't, he simply walked away. There were a few photos of Superman's bright red boots from beneath an ambulance door as a wizened EMT treated his wounds, then Henderson escorting him to his car.

"When did this happen?" Lois asked, but Jimmy wasn't listening.

"The Chief is gonna flip when I get these printed out," he beamed. "Superman was _shot_, did you see that one?" he flipped through the pictures for awhile until he'd found one that he hadn't shown her the first time around: Superman had dropped the last piece of the gun and was standing on the grass, turned slightly away from the camera, moving to look over his shoulder at the children; his near arm, the left one, was a bloody mess, the color contrast vibrant against the blue of the suit. There was just enough wind to have stirred the Man of Steel's cape slightly when the picture was taken, shifting the spit curl on his forehead to make it more prominant at the odd angle. He was the only person visible in the park at the angle the shot was taken, which was an amazing feat in itself that proved once again just how good Jimmy really was with his camera. It was an iconic shot; Superman looked sad, as opposed to the anger of the earlier pictures or the confidence of his usual photographs. The dark green of the trees in the background, just the tops as the turn of the ground hid the trunks and the children standing near the trunks; the pile of disassembled gun at Superman's feet; the bold red and yellow and blue of Superman's uniform and the dark, almost purple splash on his arm; his expression; the solitary sadness of the world's protector.

"_What_?! Was he okay?" Lois's mind was momentarily diverted, reeling down panicked trains of thought on what would happen if the world lost Superman again, this time completely and for sure. It struck her deep in the gut just how much it would hurt to lose him again.

"Yeah, the EMTs took care of him and Henderson 'removed him to an undisclosed location.'"

"But he was okay?"

"He'll be fine. He's Superman," Jimmy brushed it off with a confident grin that Lois couldn't return.

"When did this happen? How long ago?"

"About an hour and a half now, I think," Jimmy checked his watch and nodded.

"Why did nobody call me?"

"Didn't think of it, Lois; we were all too busy catching up as we went," he shrugged. "Besides, you _know_ he'll stop by your house tonight after he's healed well enough to fly and give you an interview."

"He couldn't fly?" Lois breathed.

"Why else would Chief Henderson have driven him away?"

Lois gaped at him.

"Why wasn't I _called_?" she checked her cell phone again and saw that she was correct in remembering that there were no messages of any sort waiting for her.

"You were in an interview!" Jimmy protested.

"LANE, OLSON—in here, _now_," Perry barked from his doorway, disappearing back inside as his employees rushed across the bullpen and into his office. Lois didn't even stop to put her briefcase at her desk.

"Chief—" Lois started, but Perry cut her off.

"Kent called about an hour ago to let us know that Jason's at his apartment, he's fine," Lois exhaled in relief, but that didn't answer all of the questions she had for him. "And don't call me Chief."

"But Perry—"

"Olson, _tell_ me you got some photos of that."

"I did, Chief. _Great_ ones."

"Get them printed out pronto and get back in here," Perry said, so distracted by the prospect of _great_ photos that he didn't even protest being called chief. "Lane, where the hell have you been?"

"I was interviewing the mayor," she growled, both hating that she had missed everything while she was at the near-useless interview, and the way Perry blamed her for not being in the park by chance to catch the story.

"Oh yeah, that thing Kent set up," Perry brushed it off despite the excitement he'd displayed that morning when it was announced one of his staff would be interviewing the mayor, as the man was so busy it almost never happened. "Give what you've got to Polly; I want you on Superman again. Find out where Henderson took him, how long its going to be before he's back in action… all that."

"Yes, sir," for once Lois didn't protest being put on another Superman story.

- - -

Henderson stood in the middle of the living room and stared around Clark's apartment. Clark and Jason ignored him for the most part, Clark closing himself in his bedroom and changing into sweatpants and grabbing a plain white t-shirt before reemerging. Jason was at the kitchen table, swinging his legs and coloring on the legal pad using the box of crayons he'd left behind. Clark was sure it was another Superman picture with a marvelous mustache, goatee, or hat.

Clark walked into the living room and stood in the sunlight streaming through the tall windows that made up the outer living room wall. He stood still and absorbed the sunlight for a moment, breathing, testing himself internally and listening to his heartbeat with his eyes closed.

His heartbeat was strong and steady, blood pumping through his veins evenly, spreading life. The sun on his skin warmed him to the soul, it seemed. His hands, still bandaged, stopped throbbing in time with his heart and simply ached instead. His arm continued to throb and ache beneath the thick bandage, itching where the adhesive touched his skin.

In that odd way that he had always had, that way that he had known he could run just a little bit faster and the way he had known that if he squinted just so the heat coming out of his eyes would fan out and become a flat sort of ray, Clark knew that the small bit of his invulnerability he'd recovered at the park had gone again, replaced by a touch of super-human speed.

Absentmindedly, he figured that the order in which he gained and lost his powers upon kryptonite exposure was a defense mechanism. While he lost flight right away, speed stuck around the longest, giving him a good way to get away from the kryptonite. Invulnerability was the last to go, no matter how unstable it was on its way out—though it took the longest to come back, the speed was a sort of trade-off, providing an escape when the invulnerability was gone.

Another moment in the sun and he blinked his eyes open, staring into the glare of the sun. Telescopic vision was back, and a bit of his supernatural hearing—he could hear Henderson's heart racing, and Jason's calm beat, as strong as his own. The sounds of the street weren't as loud as they usually were, and the sounds of the cats across the hall were muffled as well.

He sighed and put his shirt on stiffly, putting the sling back on after his shirt was in place just as gingerly. He ran his hand through his hair then turned to face his son and the police chief. Jason was watching, his face very serious, his crayon still.

"Are you okay, Daddy?" he asked in a very small voice.

"I will be," Clark assured him, ignoring Henderson's surprise.

"The sunshine feels good, doesn't it?" Jason asked, beginning to swing his legs again.

"Yes, it does," Clark agreed, chuckling, crossing the room to look his son over carefully for any sign of trauma of any kind. Jason blinked up at him patiently. "Are _you_ okay?"

"I'm okay, Dad," he rolled his eyes. "You worry too much."

"I know," Clark said, ruffling his hair and putting coffee on to percolate.

"He's—you're his—?" Henderson stammered. Jason suddenly sat up straight and glanced over his shoulder at his father worriedly. Clark just smiled, and Jason went back to his coloring.

"Are you trying to suggest I should grow a mustache, Jason?" Clark asked a moment later, peeking over Jason's shoulder. Jason peered up at him for a moment, squinted, then shook his head.

"You'd look funny with a mustache."

"You keep drawing me with a mustache," Clark chuckled, thumbing over his shoulder at the fridge, half covered by now with Superman drawings.

"Mommy calls it creative license."

Clark laughed and poured him a cup of apple juice, settling in the chair beside him. Henderson looked about ready to collapse from the weight of the information he'd put together over the past few weeks and what had just slipped out.

- - -

After leaving Perry's office, Lois went up to the roof of the _Planet_ and waited for Superman.

And waited.

And waited.

When the sun was beginning to move farther down on the horizon and she could wait no more, she hurried down to the bullpen and grabbed her things. There was a surprising number of people still in their cubicles, which was explained in the way they looked at her for a Superman update the moment she left the elevator. She had nothing to tell, though, so she remained silent, not making eye contact until her eyes met Perry's as the elevator doors closed in front of her on the way down.

- - -

Henderson left after an awkward half an hour of sitting and drinking coffee, claiming that he shouldn't leave his car sitting outside Clark's apartment with the press looking for any hints of Superman.

Clark tried to thank him, but Henderson disappeared down the stairs before the words had left his mouth.

Clark refilled his mug and went to sit down next to Jason again, catching sight of his second drawing.

The Superman dominated the page, as usual, but this Superman seemed particularly big relative to the two tiny men dressed all in black he was holding by the ankles over his head. They were wearing masks but they had huge, surprised eyes, and the black guns they'd had in their hands were dropping to the ground.

"Jase…" Clark started, looking at the drawing, not sure what he should say or how he should say it.

"What? No mustache," Jason said cheerily, presenting the drawing to Clark to be posted on the fridge.

- - -

Perry watched the elevator, waiting for Lois to come down from the roof. She'd rushed up there the moment she'd left his office a number of hours previous. He found himself twitching, wondering if the Man of Steel was standing on the roof, or if Lois was up there alone waiting and worrying.

His thoughts turned to the earlier events of the day again as he looked over the pages for the evening edition. Kent had come through with an in-depth outline of an article and an interview scheduled to boot. The article that Polly had written from the information gathered by Lois and Clark wasn't front page material, but the subject matter wasn't quite fit for the front page either—a top corner on page two was the perfect spot, and Polly got her byline next to Lois Lane and Clark Kent.

Thoughts of Clark Kent brought back that strange sense of guilt that had plagued him all through the afternoon.

_You send him out of the bullpen to see if Superman suddenly makes an increased number of rescues around town and what happens? Superman _does_ show up at the park in the middle of the afternoon… and gets himself shot!_

_But does that prove anything? Did Superman show up at the park because he had that superhero's sixth sense for trouble, or because I gave him the afternoon off?_

The whole thing made the editor's head spin.

_It's like the New Krypton Fiasco all over again. Metropolis holding our breath to see if he'd come out of it okay—except this time there's no hospital for them to gather outside and wait._

Lois interrupted his thoughts by arriving in the bullpen, rushing out of the elevator and gathering her things, not making eye contact with anybody. She paused at Clark's desk, riffling through one of his files and writing something on a note that she stuck in her pocket before gathering her things from her own desk and hurrying out.

_No Superman, then._ Perry thought, frowning deeper, meeting her worried gaze as the elevator doors closed her in.

- - -

"Jason," Clark started slowly, holding the drawing between them, wondering what the hell he was supposed to say.

"I could feel it this time," Jason said suddenly, catching Clark off guard.

"Feel what?"

"The green stuff."

"Kryptonite."

"Yeah, that," the boy looked puzzled. "The bald man had it on the boat, but I couldn't feel it. This time it made my tummy hurt and I tasted throw-up in my throat."

"That happens to me, too, when I get too close to it."

"And it hurts you when you touch it," Jason said, looking at the battered hand holding his drawing.

"But the sun makes me better," Clark said, making the words sound confident beyond reproach, which cheered Jason a bit, it seemed,

"The sun always makes me feel better, too," Jason said. "Is that because I'm your son?"

"Yes, it is," Clark smiled, scooping Jason up and bringing him to the couch. Jason shot him a look for the scooping, but settled into the crook of his father's arm comfortably.

"Jason," Clark said after a moment, very seriously. Jason didn't say anything, but Clark knew he was listening. "You know I would never let anybody hurt you, right? Never, ever."

"I know," Jason said, squeezing in a little closer.

Half an hour later they'd both relaxed, watching the sun as it made its progression through the afternoon, intensifying in the westward-facing windows as time progressed. The phone rang a few times, and the cell phones Clark had in his hidden pockets in the Suit lying across his bed, neither of them paid any attention, though.

Jason slowly drifted to sleep in the comfortable warmth of Clark's body, which was still higher than an average human despite his recent injuries.

Clark took Jason in his arms again, the sling slipping off his arm when he did so. He ignored the pain radiating from just above his elbow and walked slowly into his bedroom so that he wouldn't disturb the boy in his arms. He tucked the cape around him and pulled his cell phones out of the hidden pockets on the belt. But for the strip of light that would seep through the crack under the door, the room would be completely dark. It would also be slightly more sound-proofed than the rest of the apartment—another perk about living in an apartment building designed for the young entrepreneurs and the elderly both meant that the bedrooms were soundproofed more than the ordinary apartments.

Clark had a feeling that the soundproofing would come in handy when Lois showed up, as there was no way he'd be able to hide his injuries and continue the lies.

_Not the terms I would've chosen, but I _have_ been having a rather difficult time settling on my terms_, he sighed, looking around his apartment.

- - -

Lois didn't realize she was driving to Clark's apartment until she was pulling into the parking spot reserved for Clark if he were ever to get a car.

The security guard at the desk nodded to her as she made her way through the lobby, and got into the elevator. There was something oddly soothing in the orchestral elevator music, but that didn't stop her from wanting to rise faster.

"Clark?" she asked, urgently banging on his door. "Clark!"

"It's open," Clark sounded almost resigned from the other side of the door. She pushed it open and closed it behind her out of habit.

"Is Jason here? Is he okay?" she asked, dropping her purse on the boot bench next to the door and looking around for Clark. The door to the bedroom was closed, as were the French doors to the study though the thick curtains were pulled aside.

"He's fine," Clark said, his voice coming from the kitchen. Lois followed it there, wondering why Clark hadn't been in the living room in the first place. "He's asleep."

"How can he sleep at a time like this?" Lois asked, half thinking out loud.

"He was tired. It was a long day," Clark said.

Lois entered the kitchen and froze in her tracks. The man she was looking at was most certainly Clark Kent, but he was nothing like Clark Kent. He was standing to his full height, taller than his personality would normally vouch for. He wore loose sweatpants and a plain t-shirt, hardly the baggy suits he wore to the office or the plaid and jeans from Kansas.

What caught Lois's eye, though, was his face. He wasn't wearing his glasses. Without them, his eyes looked incredibly cerulean. Otherworldly cerulean.

Her eyes traveled from his eyes to his shoulders, his arm in a sling, both of his hands bandaged.

"Oh my God, Clark. Are you okay? What the hell happened to you?" she asked, hurrying to him before her memory caught up to her.

"Well, at the park…" Clark started hesitantly, his eyebrows wrinkling in confusion. She looked up at his face, noting the strong features that were so familiar. She found herself lost in his eyes for a moment.

Then she realized why he looked so familiar, so much like somebody else she knew when he wasn't wearing his glasses. That his eyes were the exact shade of blue that Jason's were, and Jason got his eyes from his father.

She stepped back from him, realizing that he was in the exact same condition that she had seen Superman in in Jimmy's photographs. The scrubs had been ditched, but it was the same sling, and both his hands were bandaged just like Superman's had been.

"You son of a bitch."

"I'm sorry."

"I can't believe it, you son of a bitch."

"I've been trying to think of a way to tell you for months."

"I _see _you every day, I gave _birth _to your _son_—you're my b-best friend," her voice broke.

"I'm sorry, Lois."

"Shut up, Clark. Just _shut up!_ Don't talk to me."

His mouth snapped closed.

Suddenly the thousand little things that hadn't seemed to make sense before fell into place. The far away looks. The sudden disappearances. The way he always had the answer to Superman questions when she really needed them. The way he always seemed to have that _in_ where the big stories were concerned.

"_Did you think I just fell out of the sky and decided to save the world?"_

_You didn't just drop into our laps, you crashed into Kansas and were raised by two wonderful people. You even lost a sister. Your father. _

_You're just as human as everybody worries that you're not. _

Lois realized she was crying and angrily brushed away the tears.

Her best friend, her one-time lover, the father of her beautiful son, the hero she'd trailed after for almost four years with a blind crush. All the same person.

_Did I never question you? Did you _always_ lie to me?_

She was hit by a wave of memories from almost six years previous. Her suspicions growing as she worked with Clark closely around the bullpen and spent time with him outside of work. Going to ridiculous means to prove to him that he was Superman.

Then finally the assignment at Niagara Falls.

"_I still can't believe Perry sent us on this _worthless_ 'investigation,'" Lois sighed, flopping back onto the heart-shaped bed. _

"_It's our last day, sweetheart. Our last night."_

"_But we haven't _done_ anything."_

"_We've spent almost three thousand dollars in a one-week stay in a m-mediocre hotel with bad room service and worse souvenirs in the gift shop."_

"_Yeah, a great expose for the _Planet's_ top investigative journalist team to cover," Lois deadpanned, cocking her head at him from her place propped on her elbows on the bed. _

"_The Chief wanted to give us a vacation after the bulk of the Henderson case."_

"_Crappy way to do it."_

"_The other somewhat relaxing story was in Alaska."_

"_I like Alaska."_

"_About ice fishing."_

_Lois frowned and flopped back onto the bed, pressing the flats of her hands to her eyes and groaning. _

"_Oh look," Clark said blandly, opening up the minibar. "They restocked us."_

"_Really?" Lois leapt from the bed and dove for the minibar, pulling out the tequila. "Quick, Clark—go get ice."_

_Chuckling, Clark left with the bucket for ice. _

_Lois poured two fingers into a tumbler and set it aside to wait for the ice. She was about to pour Clark some when she glanced back into the fridge and pulled the cheap whiskey there out to pour some into Clark's tumbler. _

_Her mind circled back around to the question of Superman. Superman and Clark. She was always thinking of that these days—how to get Clark to fess up to his alter-ego. How could she love somebody so bumbling as Clark, after all, if he wasn't truly the Man of Steel? Kal-El. _

_Clark stumbled back into the room, looking as though he was about to drop the bucket of ice he'd gone out to get as he managed the heart-shaped card key, trying to get it back into his pocket as he entered the room. If she wasn't dead-set on his revealing himself to her, she would've gone across the room and helped him. _

_She didn't. It was amusing to watch him juggle, anyway. _

_Clark took three steps into the room, his foot caught on the ugly pink polar bear rug, and he fell, arms flying up comically, ice and bucket spinning out of his hands... _

_Glasses skittering across the floor to land at Lois's feet. _

_She panicked a moment, wondering how best to play the moment she'd been anticipating for so long. _

_Slowly, she bent down and picked up a few ice cubes and dropped them into her glass. As she stood, she grabbed Clark's thick horn rim frames and held them casually in one hand, sipping her drink from the other. _

"_You dropped your glasses, Kal-El," she said, swinging them from one side and cocking her head at him. _

_Kal-El stood slowly and crossed his arms over his chest. It looked ridiculous, dressed in his khakis and black sweater, completely lacking the primary colors he was so famous for, even lacking the bright and horribly bad ties. _

"_Of all the ways you tried to get me to admit it, it ended up being this damn rug," he glared at the pink bear head. _

"_Oh, so it's been a game for you?"_

"_Of course it was," he chuckled that annoyingly condescending chuckle that he sometimes featured on television interviews. "It was a matter of time, sweetheart. I figured I might as well have fun with it."_

"You_ might as well have fun with it?" she glared at him mock-seriously, folding his glasses and setting them down on the table behind her. "What about _me_? I've been going out of my mind thinking I was going out of my mind."_

"_You're not going out your mind," he said, stepping off the rug so that he was hardly a foot's-width from where Lois leaned against the bar. _

"_Perry thought I was. _Lucy_ thinks I'm nuts from what she's seen and heard of my attempts… she kept telling me I should just get over myself and settle down with you, Clark, already. Superman or not."_

"_I didn't think you were nuts," he chuckled. Lois realized that he was very close. Very, very close. _

"_Kal-El," she said softly, wanting to reach out and touch him, not sure if that was allowed. Touching was okay when he was Clark, at work, at either of their apartments. Touching was okay when he was Superman, when they flew together, during interviews. _

"_I'm sorry I didn't just tell you. I know you hate secrets."_

"_It's a big secret."_

"_It's an important secret."_

"_I love you," she said before she could stop herself._

"_I know," he reached up and cupped her face in his hands while she laughed at him._

"_You're not Han Solo."_

"_That's good to hear—I was thought I might have a third personality to contend with."_

_Lois began to laugh, but found it difficult with his lips pressed to hers. Her lips opened to his as his hands strayed from her cheeks, pulling her closer and holding her waist to keep her there. She felt like putty, and every feminist fiber in her body opposed that feeling entirely, but it didn't matter in the least. _

_He pressed in closer, if that was possible, lifting her onto the bar easily and stepping up between her legs. His hair was silky in her fingers where the knit of his sweater was scratchy. _

_The sweater had to come off._

_Kal-El seemed to think the same thing about her jacket and blouse, pulling the jacket off her arms as she struggled to get his sweater over his head. His hair poofed comically when his sweater came off, revealing the Superman Suit beneath in all its glory. Kal-El hardly seemed to notice, busy trying to un-tuck her blouse from her skirt. _

_The sounds of another couple doing just what they both had in mind next door spoiled the mood. The woman mewing in such a fashion that Lois burst out laughing, collapsing against Kal-El's shoulder, weak with giggles, feeling his laugh rumble from deep in his chest._

"_How can you deal with sounds like that poking in all day?"_

"_It's the all night bit that gets annoying," he admitted with a shrug, stepping away and setting her back on her feet. _

"_That's one thing people probably never think about when it comes to you."_

"_And it's probably better that way."_

_Lois picked her shirt up from the bar, pulling it over her shoulders loosely. Kal-El put a hand on her waist again, pulling her close and moving his hands along beneath her shirt. Her lips were gravitating towards his when the mewing began again. _

_Kal-El groaned, hinting at just how badly he wanted her. She smirked, glad to have that effect on him. _

"_Is there anywhere more secluded we could go?" she asked, moving her body against his, wrapping her arms around his torso as he had them around hers. "Somewhere private?"_

"_Anything you want to bring?" he asked, kissing her forehead, lips lingering at her temple. The heat of his body made it impossible to think of anything else. _

"_No," she reached back and grabbed her jacket off the bar as well._

"_Good."_

_He stepped away, blurring for a moment and then he was standing in front of her in the Suit, looking just as he always had on so many interviews over the past four years. But she could see Clark in him properly now; he was Kal-El, not Superman, not Clark Kent; Kal-El. _

"_Let's go."_

_Lois could only nod, stepping into his arms and holding on even though she didn't need to. _

_They went out the window, the curtains rippling in their wake, rising quickly so that they wouldn't be spotted. _

_Lois wasn't sure how he could keep track of where they were going; she couldn't think about anything but him, holding her, touching her. She would readily admit that she probably wasn't helping him concentrate much, running her hands along his body, kissing his chest and neck. _

"_Lois," he breathed when she began kissing his neck again, pulling at the neckline of the Suit to try for the soft skin closer to his collarbone. _

"_Hm?"_

"_You're making it very difficult to fly in a straight line."_

"_I'm okay with that. I've always been more of a curvy kind of person anyway," she said, pressing closer to him on 'curvy' to make her point. His entire body was trembling. _

_His breath hitched and he shifted the way he was holding her, moving her from her place half standing on his feet, up so that he could kiss her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, hands finding their way into his hair again. _

_Lois's stomach leapt to her throat when he dropped like a stone through what seemed like humongous shards of glass. Crystalline structures, glittering like the glass she'd thought it was upon first sight, flashed past until they were suddenly in a wide open chamber. _

"_Is this your Fortress?" she asked between kisses, feeling specific parts of his body reacting more urgently to her touch. _

"_Yes," he breathed, almost dismissively, burying his face in her neck as they slowed toward the floor. Kal-El touched down, the roughest touchdown she had ever experienced in his arms and yet still hardly jarring. A moment later Lois found herself pressed against an oddly warm white wall._

_The next few hours were a jumble of white walls and silver sheets, bare body parts and trying to remember to breathe. Lois was fairly certain she made a few of the mewing noises that had driven them to the Fortress in the first place, but couldn't bring herself to care. _

_-_

"You cannot put one above the rest_," the giant floating head was saying to Kal-El as he stood at what could pass as a console of some sort if consoles were made out of crystalline glass-looking tubes. _

"_I love her, father," Kal-El said, glaring up at the big floating head. The head didn't seem to have anything to say to that, it just hung there in the air looking sad. _

"You cannot put one above the rest_," the head repeated. Kal-El looked like he was about to slam a fist into the console. Or just turn off the hologram of the head. "_To sacrifice many for the one… Your duty is to the masses."

"_Why did you allow me to continue to live as I was raised, then? To live as Clark Kent?"_

"You needed—" _the head began, but Kal-El cut him off. _

"_You say you tried to plan for everything that I would face in life on this planet. Are you telling me you didn't plan for this?"_

_The head looked very sad for a moment before it spoke again. _"I did, Kal-El. I had hoped you would not need it, but I did make provisions in the case this matter was introduced."

_Lois watched one of the huge crystal pillars that formed both part of the wall and part of the roof rotate to reveal a doorway with a sort of chamber-space inside. There were glowing buttons along one side of the entrance making up a sort of control panel. _

"If you want to give yourself to this one human, you must live as a human._"_

_There was stillness in the wide room of the Fortress. Not even the wind that Lois knew to be whipping around outside could be heard. _

_Kal-El looked up at the hologram of his father once more before solemnly lifting off the dais he'd stood on and landing before the chamber's entrance. The huge head looked sad for a moment before it deactivated, throwing the room into dark and shadow. Lois could just make out Kal-El's silhouette in the dim light coming from inside the chamber, illuminated every few seconds in rhythmic flashes of color from the control panel. _

_Kal-El stood outside the chamber for a moment, examining the control panel. It made Lois's heart beat a little faster to know that he only hesitated in order to figure out how to activate the chamber, not in his decision to give everything up for her. _

_He stepped into the chamber after pressing a code of some sort into the control panel. The door slid shut of its own volition, sealing Kal-El inside. He looked up at her, seeming to notice her for the first time, from the other side of the slightly foggy glass, or crystal, that made up the door. _

_His eyes snapped shut when the chamber began to thrum, humming low and constant. The Fortress was trembling with the vibrations of it. Red light leaked out from the chamber, intensifying and fading in time with the thrumming—she couldn't see Kal-El through the brightness of it. _

_The humming and vibrations intensified. Lois moved back against the nearest crystalline pillar, away from the ledge she'd been standing on. The swirling red light finally began to dull in the chamber. Kal-El's silhouette, slumped but still upright, became visible inside. The vibrations reached their worse, the crystal console Kal-El had been standing at sparked and smoked, the translucent white turning to cloudy black. The pillar that the hologram of Kal-El's father had appeared in seemed to shift back so that it was like all the others, insignificant, slightly cloudy as well. _

_The thrumming died down without prelude, simply stopping as the chamber door slid open. Kal-El stayed inside for a moment, holding onto the frame, breathing heavily. _

_Lois rushed down from her place high in the great room, navigating the awkwardly spaced and slightly icy steps with less caution than advisable in her rush to his side. _

"_Kal-El?" she asked, catching his shoulder as he slowly made his way out of the chamber. "Are you alright?"_

"_I'm fine," he answered, sounding just as strong as he ever did. He straightened and for a moment it was as though nothing had changed, as though he was about to fly up to the dais and tell the hologram of his father what an idiot he was. But nothing happened. His eyes roamed the room, settling for a moment on the ruined console and the cloudy pillar that had receded into the wall. _

"_Are you sure? You didn't have to do that, you know."_

"_Yes I did," he said, wrapping an arm around her waist and holding her tight. "I wouldn't have it any other way."_

_Reluctantly, she agreed with him, letting him pull her close and kiss her again, letting him guide her back up the awkward steps to the bed with the silky silver sheets and make love to her again. _

_- _

_Kal-El, no—Clark was beaten badly defending her honor in a boxcar diner in the middle of the frozen north, a nowhere town without a name or permanent residents beyond the staff of the diner and the gas station. It was the first time he saw his own blood, Lois knew. _

_It was a horrible shock to both of them. _

"_This will just take some getting used to, is all," Clark said after she'd finished bandaging him up. For a moment there had been banter like there used to—she'd dabbed antiseptics onto his cuts and he'd cursed like a sailor in English and a few languages she didn't know. In that moment she had been able to laugh heartily, only to remember a moment later just why he was able to feel the sting of the antiseptic in the first place. _

_Lois spent most of her time in silence, not exactly regretting what he had done for her. She loved him too much to regret that he had given up _everything _for _her_. It hurt to see him as the shadow of what he had been, though. He was still Kal-El, and yet he wasn't. He was missing a part of himself, and not just figuratively. _

_They watched the news every night and the look on his face made her want to cry._

_-_

_Lois wasn't surprised to wake one morning and find him gone. He left a note, explaining that he had gone back, that he loved her. _

_She bought herself a bus ticket to the nearest city with an airport and tried not to worry about him, tried to sleep instead. Those that saw her—most of them recognized her, the famous Lois Lane, Superman's press contact—didn't ask her about Superman but their expressions told her that they wanted to._

_She couldn't blame them; Superman hadn't been spotted for a week, after all. Hadn't interfered when there had been those floods in Indonesia, when the floods had caused massive mudslides. Hadn't interfered when three criminal Kryptonians had forcefully taken over the White House and the United States, wreaking havoc, violent and destructive. _

_And what was his press contact doing on a bus in the frozen north?_

_-_

_Lois paced her apartment for hours after she'd arrived back in Metropolis, unable to sleep, unable to do anything but wonder if Kal-El had made it back to the Fortress, if he had managed to undo what the chamber had done after the consoles had been so destroyed. _

What if he died on the walk back? It was a long walk, through the snow, slipping all over the place…

_She wished she hadn't left her tequila in the locked drawer of her desk at the _Planet_. It took her an hour of wandering to remember the wine rack in the cupboard across from the washing machine and the one bottle of wine that she always forgot about. _

_Two glasses later she was ready for bed. _

_She didn't sleep well. She woke on the hour every hour, checked her answering machine to see if Kal-El had called, looking out at the sky for signs of the El family crest. It wasn't a good way to make it through the night. _

_She rose on auto-pilot the next morning, turning the TV on, then turning it off again when all that was on her usual news channels was the lack of Superman in the skies and the abundance of criminal Kryptonians. _

_A pink pencil skirt and matching jacket—it had been Lucy's idea of a joke when she'd bought it for her, but it was the only thing clean enough to wear to work after a week and a half away—from the back of her closet later, Lois was standing out on the street hailing a cab in the crisp morning air. It was very nearly fall and mornings and evenings were brisk in Metropolis. _

_She arrived at the _Planet_ and, for the first time, wasn't so sure she wanted to go up to the bullpen. There would be no klutzy Clark waiting for her, almost as though he never left at night even though she usually left with him, sitting across the aisle from her desk and holding out a steaming mug of coffee as she approached. _

_She was lucky enough to get the elevator to herself, allowing her a few more minutes to collect herself. _

_-_

_The day passed slowly, and the day after that passed even slower. She didn't sleep at all in the intervening night, arriving at work with the dark circles beneath her eyes hidden in layers of make-up. She had yet to do laundry, wearing an old pantsuit she was fairly certain she'd interviewed in all those years ago. _

_Jimmy was there with her coffee and a hopeful look on his face when she arrived. She couldn't meet his eye—he was waiting for news on both Clark and Superman, and she didn't have anything to tell him. Jimmy handed over the coffee and disappeared into the press of the bullpen—she'd arrived moments before the morning meeting, not able to pull herself out of bed a moment earlier. _

_The morning meeting had just ended when Lex Luthor wandered into the bullpen, followed moments later from crashing glass in Perry's office. Lois happened to be in the office, gaping out at Luthor—recently escaped from jail and disappeared into the population without a trace—as he wandered toward the office, grinning at her from the other side of the glass wall. _

"_Which is the one you spoke of?" Zod asked, looking around imperiously at faces with the sort of look on his face that declared that all humans looked the same to him—Lois recognized his narrow chin and pointed beard from the short segments of news coverage she'd watched on TV. _

"_This is," Luthor said, almost chipper, indicating Lois. She blinked at the four of them—Luthor and the three Kryptonians. _

_Before Lois could come to terms with what was going on, she found herself ready to collapse into the nearest chair, possibly onto the nearest patch of floor. Kal-El had stepped through the hole in the glass of Perry's window, looking calm and strong, and thoroughly pissed off. _

_Insults were traded, then Kal-El and Zod were fighting, throwing punches strong enough to send their opponents spiraling into the sky. Lois found herself hanging out the windows of the _Planet_, following the fight across the skies. _

_Knowing that Kal-El was invulnerable again did little to waylay her fears. Her mind provided a thousand things that could go wrong—what if his powers had changed somehow after being removed? What if he was still hurt from the fight in the diner only a few nights ago? What if he was back to what he had been before, but this General Zod was stronger or somehow more powerful? What if those other two Kryptonians intervened? One against three wasn't unusual where Superman was concerned, but he was usually the clear superior and didn't take advantage of it to beat the crap out of his opponents, but restrained them until their arrest. One against three, very nearly equally matched and all incredibly strong, incredibly fast, and in flight. _

_Then they were back at the Fortress and it looked exactly as it had before Kal-El had gone into the chamber and given up his powers. Luthor attempted to win himself Australia, Lois thought for a brief, brilliant second that Zod was just going to let one of his henchmen kill Superman's nemesis after he was no longer useful instead of dealing with Australia, but then Superman arrived. _

_The fight continued. Lois found herself a hostage for a brief moment before she had the sense to get away from the melee. Pressed in the gap between two pillars, feeling the odd heat that came off of them, she watched the Kryptonians fight, listened to Luthor egg the criminals on. _

_She almost shouted aloud when Kal-El was forced back into the chamber. The entire Fortress was full of the red light the second time it was activated, and it seemed that he was in pain inside the chamber. She wanted to run to him, but her legs wouldn't cooperate. _

_But he had tricked them. Superman had been victorious, as the world had expected he would be. Only Lois knew how close of a battle it had been. The thought of it terrified her._

_He'd flown her back to her apartment after it was all over, after Luthor and the Kryptonians had been delivered to M.P.D. and locked up to await a speedy trial. _

_They hadn't spoken, just clung together desperately. They'd both known, then, that things would have to change. That Kal-El's father had been right and that he _couldn't_ put her above the masses, that he would always have to be Superman and that being associated with Superman would be dangerous for her. _

"_We'll keep it a secret," Lois said, suggested, after they'd been standing on her balcony for awhile in silence. The moon had risen above them, not a perfect crescent or a full moon as moonlit scenes tend to feature, but a tiny sliver that hardly lit up the night—the balcony was dark, the light of the street lamps not standing a chance to make it to the height and the lights Lois had switches for al turned off. "Nobody will know."_

"_We can't. Lois, we can't," he sounded as devastated as she felt. "We… I can't risk you."_

_He'd lifted off into the night without another word, leaving her speechless on the balcony. For once she hadn't been able to argue back—what does one say when the Man of Steel decides something cannot be? He hadn't left her any room to even think of possibilities. _

_-_

_She lasted a week. A long, terrible week of crying herself to sleep and going about daily life at the bullpen and around her apartment on auto-pilot. Kal-El was trying to distance himself from her in every way possible. They still worked together, were still partners, but he didn't meet with her for breakfast before the morning meeting like he usually did, and said that he 'probably shouldn't' join her for take-out at her place when they finished late. _

_It was awful. _

_Lois finally broke. She hadn't been able to face the people of the Coffee Shoppe, asking after Clark, wondering where he'd gotten to in the past week and a half—instead she'd bought a juicer, decided to focus on making herself miserable by beginning to eat ridiculously healthily, giving herself an excuse to be miserable that she could share with people. _

_Clark gave her one of those looks when she was going on about her wonderful new juicer and squeezing herself a fresh glass of orange juice that made her knees melt and her heart race. The one that meant she was doing something endearing and it was endearing because she wasn't doing it to be endearing, she was doing it because she was herself. _

_She loved getting that look from him, and it had broken her. _

"_I just can't do this," she'd sobbed, glad that they had somehow managed to be alone in the break room, out of earshot of the entire bullpen for the moment though still visible through the glass in the door. "Kal-El, I just can't. Seeing you and talking with you and _knowing_ you and not being allowed to _touch_ you, to _be with_ you…" she trailed off into a hiccupping mess for a moment, trying desperately to pull herself together. Kal-El watched her, his back to the door, his eyes speaking volumes about how hard the past week had been on him as well. "I just love you, Kal-El, and I can't _not_…" she trailed off again, unable to find the right words to get her feelings across. _

_Kal-El didn't say anything, but he slowly took his glasses off, folding them and pocketing them and then cupping her face in his hands. Her heart fluttered a bit to see him without any barriers, and the look he was giving her was simply devastating. _

_He kissed her like she'd never been kissed before. There was sadness in the kiss, an abundance of sadness, but Lois was sure it was her own sadness as much as his, that it was because it was a kiss they'd silently promised wouldn't happen._

_She'd had no inkling that he was saying goodbye with that kiss and taking her memories with him. _

Lois remembered what had passed after that well enough. They'd had another two weeks together, Clark always around to fill in her memory gaps and laugh with her about her sudden difficulties. He'd reminded her of what had happened at Niagara Falls, feeding her a boring story that was almost exactly what they had written for the article with a few more vulgar details.

Things had been normal for awhile, or at least she'd perceived them to be. They worked together, they ate together—they spent every waking moment together and then some. They were the best of friends, just as they always had been. He called her 'sweetheart' and she tolerated it. She interviewed Superman and he tolerated her renewed crush on him.

He'd been gone less than a month later.

"How could you?"

Clark had simply disappeared one morning. His desk had been cleared out and when she'd gone to his apartment, that had been vacated as well. Perry said he'd given his notice, been surprised she hadn't known about it.

She'd tried to be mad, but it hadn't worked. Perry had eventually given over that Clark had told him he planned to go on a trip around the world. Lois was in the middle of digging up the phone number for the Kent farm when people started noticing that Superman hadn't been seen in awhile.

Superman's continued absence had kept her busy for a few days; she'd been too busy to notice that Richard White had joined the _Planet_'s staff. When it was almost certain that Superman had left the planet, Lois decided to go looking for him. She had a nagging feeling that finding him would mean finding Clark, and she desperately wanted to get in contact with Clark—she'd called the Kent farm and talked to his mother, but he'd already left the farm by the time she'd called.

Perry had assigned Richard to be her watchdog while she globe-trotted for a month and a half in search of Superman and/or Clark Kent. She asked after both everywhere she went, half expecting to run into Clark at an airport or something, but it hadn't happened.

Depressed, she'd delved too deeply into the minibar the one night she'd given in and opened it up, mixing herself and Richard drinks until they couldn't see straight. They'd slept together and continued to do so after that first night until they returned to Metropolis.

Richard had insisted on dating her properly when they returned. He'd taken her to dinner, taken her to the movies—taken her on four official 'dates' before he made a move to get into her bed again. She'd been very taken with him.

Then she'd discovered she was pregnant. He'd been supportive and blue-eyed and strong and a pilot who liked horror movies.

The rest was history—the pregnancy, Jason's birth, Jason's frailty, the worry, the only assigning Lucy to be Jason's godmother and not giving him a godfather because Clark wasn't around and she couldn't bear to think of anybody else taking the position. The moving in together and then the engagement. The engagement becoming prolonged, getting a bit rocky. Clarks' return. Superman's return.

As her thoughts caught her up to the present, Lois's eyes focused on the man standing nervously in front of her. He had his good arm out, a hand on her shoulder steadying her.

"Lois…" Clark was saying, looking at her worriedly. _How dare he be worried about me!_ "Lois, are you okay…?"

She wanted to hit him. She balled her hands into fists at her side, violently wrenching herself away from him and his supportive touch. It occurred to her that he had a huge bruise on his forehead and a bullet wound in his arm, that she _could_ hit him and not suffer for it.

She did. His head snapped sharply to the side, the sound of it filling the kitchen.

She backed-up the punch with a slap before bringing her now throbbing fist to her side-- invulnerable or not, he was still a very solid man. Despite the pain, she could only smile. His cheek was already turning red when he turned back to face her.

"Don't you _ever_ lie to me again," she instructed him, struggling a moment further to find a way to express her anger.

Her breath was coming fast, some catching in choking sobs to support the tears leaking onto her cheeks. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to him. She wanted to shout and carry on and pound her fists on his chest and scream at him and hate him forever, but something was stopping her.

_Oh, you've got to be kidding me_, she wanted to pinch herself. _I'm still fucking in love with him_.

At the moment, that realization only made her hate him more. That he could win her over so fantastically that such a huge lie couldn't even break her heart from him. That she was almost _glad_ that Clark Kent and Superman and Kal-El were all the same person, that she could love the whole package now.

"I _hate_ you," she snarled, throwing herself at him, pounding his chest and shoulders, not caring if she aggravated his arm, fists flying up toward his face occassionally. Words began pouring out of her mouth, telling how she'd trusted him, how he'd been her best friend, how he'd ruined everything. Words to make him guilty, to make her feel better.

He never once moved to defend himself. _Because he knows he deserves it!_

She concluded her rant by kicking him in the shins so hard that it made her toes, still inside her unspectacular pumps, throb. He pulled back a little, taking the weight off the leg she'd kicked. The movement surprised her even though she knew she shouldn't be surprised.

"Where's my son?" she ground out, glaring, not wanting to have to ask him a question that would involve listening to his answer.

"The, uhm, bedroom," he answered, sounding almost terrified of what she'd scream at him next.

She glared a moment longer, a thousand things rushing through her head. She wanted to continue yelling at him. The only problem was that she also had an irksome longing to kiss him.

That, of course, only made her angrier.

She stormed away from him, trying to calm herself by the time she reached the door to his bedroom. She opened the door and there was Jason, sound asleep, wrapped up in the famous red cape. It broke her heart to see it—both because he was so magnificent, lying there, and because it meant that Jason had known before that Clark and Superman were the same person.

_How did I not know? How did Jason find out but I didn't? What did he do to me?_

_How long has Jason know?_

She had half a mind to turn on Clark again and dig into him again, but the rest of her mind, the dominant half, didn't want to give him the opportunity to explain himself. He'd never given her an option to speak, after all. He'd taken her memories without anything resembling a by-your-leave or the like.

Without waking him, she picked Jason up off of the bed, taking the cape with her out of spite. The rest of the suit was in a blue puddle on a chair in one corner, the bright red boots tucked beneath—it called to mind the image of the suit folded on the chair at the hospital, though here it looked so much more casual.

Her heart clenched again and she held Jason a bit tighter, leaving the room.

Clark was watching her, the look upon his face pure misery, from the doorway to the kitchen as she left. _You brought this on yourself. You have no right to be miserable_, she thought at him, knowing full well he didn't have _that_ super-power.

"Don't you dare come anywhere _near_ me again," she whispered harshly, trying not to wake Jason but still wanting to get her point across, as she closed the door behind her.

Clark sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands for a long time after Lois left.


	32. Chapter 32

Lois dreaded the moment the doors would open upon the bullpen, more than likely revealing Clark Kent at his desk, directly next to her desk, their shared cubicle area. She dreaded the moment that she'd have to pretend like nothing was wrong between them; she even anticipated being called upon to help him further a cover story of some sort for his injuries.

She almost punched the 'close doors' button again when they dinged, but she kept herself in check, almost wishing there was somebody with her in the elevator to keep a face on for. But it was just her.

The doors opened to the pre-morning meeting bustling of the bullpen, but there was no Clark Kent in sight. For one panicking moment Lois thought he might've run again, gone on another sabbatical from which he probably wouldn't return this time. But his stuff was still on his desk, the blank patch where his laptop went had a few envelopes on it from Accounting and there was a thick folder paper clipped shut with one of the interns' handwriting labeling it for him. His pictures were in place in their frames on the shelf, and his post-its and a few more pictures from around the office were still tacked to the bulletin board.

"You okay, Lois?" Jimmy asked, appearing at her elbow holding out a cup of coffee. The similarity to the days after Clark had left for Krypton—_had gone to Krypton!_—made her pause again and blink at the photographer without answering. "Lois?"

"Sorry," she took the coffee with an appreciative quirk to her lips and downed a quarter of it in one. "Where's Clark?" she tried to make it casual, but the pause before he answered made her sure it was more strained than she'd wanted it to be.

"Dunno, really," Jimmy said, giving her an odd look. "He called in way early, left Perry a message—he's gonna be out for the rest of the week; apparently he's got a huge story he's got a lead on. Something in Gotham, I think—the chief was really vague. He seemed excited, though."

"In Gotham?" Lois's mind shot off down numerous different trails. Bruce Wayne was in Gotham, Clark had known him long enough for the Prince of Gotham to call Metropolis's secret hero a brother. Then there was the Batman, who she already knew had Clark's cell phone number. With the recent revelation, she wondered what else Clark hadn't been telling her, what other lies he'd woven into his life so that she wouldn't take a second look at him.

_So who's the real Clark? What part of his presentation of himself was real and what wasn't? What wasn't presented at all?_

Jimmy stood watching thoughts flicker across her face for a moment before he decided she was otherwise occupied and left her to her thoughts.

- - -

"Yes, Ma, I'm fine," Clark assured her for the hundredth time.

"_Are you sure? Are you getting enough sun?_"

"I'm standing in the sun right now, Ma," he assured her, and he was. He'd lain awake all night, thinking and trying to ignore the throbbing in his hands. When he'd felt the sun rise, he'd risen as well and grumpily pulled the bandages off of his hands in the light of his wall of windows.

"_Honey, are you okay? You sound kind of stressed._"

"They shot at a bunch of kids to draw me out, Ma. They shot at _Jason_ to draw me out. They tried to kill my _son_," Clark said, drawing in another deep, furious breath.

"_Is he okay?_"

"He's better than me," Clark ground out. Very simply, he wasn't much for conversation at the moment. There was a long pause before Martha spoke again.

"_Do you want me to come to Metropolis? It's not very far from here, you know…"_

"I know, Ma. Thanks. I appreciate it. I'll be fine," he heard the faint intake of breath that meant she was going to offer again; "I'll call you later. Thanks, Ma."

"_I love you, Clark._"

"Love you too, Ma."

"_I'm glad you're okay._"

"I'll talk to you later."

Clark sighed, trying to expel the emotions pent up inside of him with the air in his lungs. It didn't work, and it didn't feel properly fulfilling to expel all the air in his lungs without creating a massive gust.

"My life is a royal mess," he sighed, throwing the phone onto the couch.

His eyes traveled up to the picture of himself and Lois, one of the only ones he'd brought from the shed in Kansas that served as his personal storage shed to decorate his apartment. He had four such photos around the apartment, all from different times or events before he'd gone to Krypton. The one in the living room, the one that his eyes always gravitated towards when he was in the room, had been taken at the office Christmas party the year before Niagara Falls: it was a candid, taken by Jimmy, of course; Clark was in a tuxedo with a red bow tie that Lois had bought him for his birthday as a joke, holding a champagne flute and looking utterly bewildered; Lois was in a form-fitting plum-colored cocktail dress with a swooping neckline and no back—she was radiant, and the look on her face said that she was the one that had Clark so bewildered.

He'd chosen that picture not only because there was no suspicion in it, but because it was a great picture of them. They looked happy together, even as Lois prepared to laugh at him and he prepared to be laughed at. They were standing very close, just being the friends they had been.

If his heat vision had been present, it probably would've distorted the glass.

Clark ran a frustrated hand through his hair before he remembered his hands were far from whole and ended up flinching violently, yanking his hand away from his hair. Cursing, he stepped further into the morning sun, walking out onto the balcony and leaning against the glass beside the door to absorb the sun. He tried to let his frustrations roll off of him, to let rational thought return, to try to think of a way to apologize to Lois so that she would know that he was sincere, and came up dry.

He found himself pacing the length of the balcony unintentionally and shook his head at himself, returning to the privacy of his apartment. The direct sunlight of the balcony had felt very good and he could _see_ the difference on his hands, but his shoulder still throbbed aggravatingly, reminding him of the elevating crisis in the city. He couldn't even bring himself to feel properly sorry for the lies to Lois—he was mad that he hadn't been able to choose his terms for telling her the truth; but mostly he was mad that Jason had become involved again.

He made himself a bowl of oatmeal and found himself without an appetite. Instead, he left the meal to cool to inedibility at the table while he fished a clean pair of jeans out of his closet and a long-sleeved shirt to hide the bandage on his arm. He carried the shirt out and tossed it onto the couch on top of the phone, standing in the pool of light again and pulling off the bandage on his arm, exposing it to the light.

Once again he took inventory of his abilities as he absorbed the rays of the yellow sun. The hole that the bullet had torn through was a massive scab that simply felt _wrong_ when he moved it, but otherwise his invulnerability was back in its entirety. His speed, however slowly it had faded, remained lacking. He could fly and he did so, hovering up toward the lofted ceiling and into larger pools of light. Strength was back as well, as were the majority of his eyes' special features—he wouldn't be x-raying across the city until he got more sun, but he could see through the walls of his apartment easily, and zooming to a distance or up close on an object wasn't a problem.

Knowing that at least his usual level of physical ability was returning made him feel a small bit better. With his life spinning around him, the return of that small yet extraordinary bit of normalcy was a relief.

Clark hovered, absorbing, healing.

His phone began ringing again; startling him so much that he dropped several feet before catching himself. Annoyed, he answered rather sharply; "Clark Kent."

"_Clark, it's Rick_."

"Rick," Clark said, easily dropping the rest of the distance to the floor and frowning. "Hi."

"_Are_ _you alright? I saw what happened on the news last night, and your mother called me—said you weren't returning her calls. I called last night too, a few times. What's going on? She was in a right state, Clark. Are you okay?"_

"I'm… fine. I just got of the phone with Ma, so…" Clark shrugged one shoulder even though his uncle couldn't see him.

"_You should've called her the instant you were near a phone_," Rick said, the accusation in his voice enough to rile Clark into his own defense.

"Sorry if I had other things on my mind," he said slightly more sharply than he would've otherwise allowed himself. He checked himself, though, taking a deep breath and looking down at the coffee table where Jason's drawing of Superman holding the masked bad-guys upside-down by the ankles had been left. Expelling the breath in a long sigh, he finally continued; "I had a few other things to worry about besides phone calls yesterday night."

"_How are you? Are you alright?"_

"I'm on the mend," Clark said evasively, looking down at himself and feeling the skin of his palm beginning to smart a bit more sharply as it was curled around the phone.

"_Do you need any help? I'm an old retired guy; I can be on a plane to Metropolis in an hour._"

"Thank you, Rick, really; but I'll be fine. I'm headed to Gotham this afternoon to follow up on a few leads on the kryptonite. The sooner we figure this thing out, the sooner I can take care of a few petty thieves without worrying about them having kryptonite."

"_Are you sure? I could meet you in Gotham, make sure you don't overtax yourself. It's not like you're injured all that often… I know your ma would feel a lot better about everything if you had somebody around to look after you while you heal._"

Clark chuckled almost unwillingly, swapping hands on the phone and exposing the stiff palm to the sunlight, frowning at the blisters. "I'm sure. I've got a few friends there who'll keep an eye on me… Anyway, I should be back to full health in the next couple of days, weather permitting."

"_Weather permitting_," Rick sighed and Clark could easily imagine his uncle shaking his head at it all.

"Thanks for calling, Rick. I'll drop in when I'm able again, alright?" Clark said, watching Bruce swing himself silently up onto the balcony beyond the glass.

"_That would be great_," Rick agreed, almost half-sighing as though he knew Clark was trying to end the conversation for whatever reason. "_Take it easy, Clark_."

"I will," he assured his uncle before hanging up and tossing the phone onto the couch again.

Bruce let himself in and swung the unremarkable black backpack off his back onto the couch before looking up; "Hi."

"You could've just used the stairs like a normal person, you know," Clark said, but he couldn't help but smile.

"Yes, but I'm far from normal," Bruce just shrugged. They exchanged a tense smile before Bruce opened the backpack and pulled out the extensive first aide kit he usually kept in the saber room. From it he took the needle and thread he'd need to stitch Clark's arm closed, gauze, scissors, and a small lead box that contained a small chunk of kryptonite that would allow the needle to penetrate Clark's skin.

"True," Clark sighed, looking down at his ground meat-looking arm and frowning at the red, inflamed skin. It still hurt like hell, and it wouldn't be getting any better in the next few minutes.

- - -

Lois leaned back against the door to the roof access, hands shaking as she brought the cigarette to her lips again. It was her first in many months yet the nicotine was a bittersweet vice. Smoking reminded her inescapably of Kal-El—his Superman-self telling her she didn't have cancer yet and blowing out her cigarettes with his remarkable breath, his Clark-self throwing away her cigarettes and listing off statistics about why she shouldn't smoke.

Frustrated, she threw the cigarette onto the pavement and smashed it violently beneath her toe before stomping away from the door to look out over the city in the morning light.

Her eyes drifted down to the morning edition of the _Planet_ she'd brought to the roof with her where she'd left it on the ledge, half hoping it would blow away before she got the chance to look at it again.

The main feature of the front page was Jimmy's iconic photograph of Kal-El in the park, arm bleeding, cape fluttering, looking tired and sad and almost broken. The picture itself made her almost as mad as the man it was of did—he had no right to look like that and make her feel sympathetic towards him when she wanted so badly to hate him.

"Has Superman Had Enough?" the headline read, the article she'd written framing the huge photograph. She'd managed to track down a tape from channel nine and watch it before chasing witnesses for quotes—the article hadn't needed much to be hard-hitting news, just the simple truth of the event. The pictures Jimmy had taken did most of the talking anyway, which was lucky.

The kryptonite follow-up had been shuffled into a side-bar on page three, which she found ironic—the information that the Man of Steel himself had wanted to look into, the information that, if properly chased down, would make Superman's job a ridiculous amount easier, was passed over for a play of emotion across a usually stoic man's face.

She turned away from the paper again, digging in her pocket for another cigarette.

- - -

Bruce let Clark have his quiet on the train ride from Metropolis to Gotham. They both wore unremarkable clothes, faded shirts and regular jeans, Bruce in a ball cap, Clark wearing long sleeves despite the warm weather and keeping his hands tucked out of sight.

Clark was so distracted that Bruce had to prod him along when they transferred trains, guiding him to a new seat patiently, ignoring the people doing double-takes nearby when they saw him and thought they recognized him. Alfred picked them up at the station near Wayne Tower and brought them to the Manor, again in quiet.

- - -

Clark lasted a whopping forty-five minutes in the basement of Wayne Manor, looking through file after file, running searches on Bruce's massive multi-screen computer, before he started pacing. Bruce continued to browse his files, looking for information on Ernie and his ties to the drug trade between Metropolis and Gotham.

"Lois found out," Clark admitted after another ten minutes of walking back-and-forth.

"And?"

"And she's mad as hell."

"Lois is always mad as hell about something."

"She took Jason."

"_Took_ Jason?" Bruce sat back from the file he'd been looking over and giving his friend his undivided attention.

"After she finished yelling at me, she picked him up and left."

"Are you saying she left, as in left the apartment, or left as in _left_."

"I don't know."

Bruce was quiet for a moment; "Sounds like something you would do."

"I—what?" Clark stopped pacing to stare at him.

"It sounds exactly like what you did before Jason was born," Bruce said, falsely nonchalant. "Something happened and you decided you couldn't face her anymore, so you picked up and left."

"That was completely different!"

"Oh, really."

"Yes!" Clark began pacing again. "It was for her own good! I left to keep her safe!"

"You left her pregnant and alone."

"She had Richard."

"Only because she didn't have you."

"That's completely ridiculous."

"Not really."

They stared at each other for a moment.

"What are you so upset about?" Bruce asked. "It's a taste of your own medicine, isn't it?"

Clark ground his teeth together for a moment; "So what should I do?"

"Hell if I know," Bruce said, suddenly backing off. Clark looked murderous. "I was playing devil's advocate. Women are freaking devious—_you_ left because you thought you were being noble; _she_ left because she's mad at you. You're going to have a hell of a lot of hoops to jump through to get back into her good graces."

"Suppose I have to talk to her to find out what the hoops are, though," Clark said, dropping back onto his stool.

"Well," Bruce said, clapping his hands together. "It's a good thing you're so good at jumping, eh?"

"You're not helping."

"Maybe not, but I'm entertained."

"Bastard."

"And yet you keep coming back…"

"It's 'cause you've got all these files. It's a journalist's dream," Clark frowned, picking up the file he'd been looking over when he'd been overwhelmed by the need to pace.

"Getting back to the files," Bruce tossed the file he'd been looking over across the table. "I think I found something."

Ernest Milton had been in and out of jail since he was a teenager—his juvenile record was sealed, but that didn't stop Bruce from having the information. His first offense had been when he was sixteen for disorderly conduct, he'd been high in his mother's diner and had ended up breaking the front window. His mother died when he was seventeen and his life had gone downhill from there, he'd become a dealer. His first possession charge had come when he was eighteen and a half, he'd gotten out after two years on good behavior and because he was so young and 'misguided.' And things had progressed from there.

His latest trip to the local jail—for marijuana possession with intent to sell—had ended six months previously, they could assume he'd fallen in with his usual crowd. Dead in the harbor with fake kryptonite stashed in his shoe was curiously out of character.

"Properties in Gotham and Metropolis, the slums. MPD is searching his apartment now; GCPD will probably get around to it by the end of the year," Bruce scooted his chair over to the computers and hacked into the MPD files. "They haven't filed their reports yet."

"Do you have the Gotham address?"

Ernie's apartment was a disaster area. Aside from the general mess, though, there was nearly a hundred thousand dollars worth of marijuana stashed throughout the place, in the regular hidey-holes. The pair of them dug through things and found, a bit better hidden, almost ten pounds of fake kryptonite.

Bruce arranged things so that the police, when they eventually got to investigating the property, would know that Batman had beat them to it and wasn't happy about it. They brought the drugs and kryptonite back to the cave for analysis.

"Why is it that we only find these guys when they're dead?" Bruce asked, handing the results over and beginning to pace again. "Are they just that good, or do I need to start looking into the cops around here again?"

Clark didn't say anything.

- - -

Jason was even less happy with her for removing him from Clark's apartment than he had been when she'd enforced his grounding. Now, though, he was asleep.

He'd insisted she keep the window open, however.

_I wonder how often Clark came to visit him. _Clark_! Visiting my, his, _our_ son through his bedroom window! How long did Jason know about all this? _

He looked so peaceful, angelic. Just asleep. He looked like his dad, even with his eyes closed and his unearthly cerulean orbs hidden for the moment. His hair had the same texture as Kal-El's even if it was lighter as of yet. The roots were darker, though, showing signs of darkening further—maybe not to the pitch black of his father's, but to a closer approximation to Lois's chocolate brown at least. His skin was just as perfectly pale as Kal-El's. She wondered if he would ever have any blemishes, ever struggle with acne when he hit puberty.

She'd wondered all those things before. New observations were rising to mind, though. She easily remembered how like Clark she'd always thought him. How his mannerisms, even when he was a toddler, had brought her wayward friend to mind. It had hurt sometimes.

As quietly as she could, Lois left her son's bedroom and made her way downstairs. There were three days worth of papers stacked up on the table, all folded open to the ads. She'd begun circling potential houses and apartments in the area that were for sale or rent that held any sort of potential. There weren't that many that she actually felt any sort of connection with.

As usual, before she could manage to cross more than five potential places off her list, her thoughts turned to Clark.

She'd known him for a very long time. In both guises. She trusted him, she loved him. He was a complicated person and she knew that well. The problem was that he didn't seem to be able to trust her.

_That's not right_, Clark's voice in the back of her head informed her. She could practically see him folding his arms and giving her his usual stubborn stare from the other side of the island counter. _He trusts you, he just doesn't trust himself. He can't always protect you—especially not since you are who you are—and that terrifies him. _

Her fingers dialed his cell phone number of their own accord. It even rang twice before she realized who she was calling and quickly hung up.

Her next call rang three times before Lucy picked up.

"Hey, 'Lo, what's up?"

"What am I supposed to do when the only person who can make me stop crying is the one that made me cry?"

"Call your sister, give her twenty minutes to get across town, and an extra fifteen to get a gallon of double-fudge-chocolate delite."

"I don't need ice cream, Lucy."

"I'll use the extra time to get some cheap wine, then."

"I don't need alcohol, Luce."

"Then you're worse off then I thought."

Her silence was probably enough to worry Lucy even more.

"I'll be there in fifteen, Lois."

"No, Lucy," she sighed. "Nevermind. I'll be fine—stay with your family."

"You are my family, 'Lo," her sister said, then hung up before Lois could protest further.

**A/N: A thousand apologies for taking so long to update! Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me so long-- if it makes things any better, after about two more chapters (that will probably be a bit slow in coming along here...) there's about twelve pre-written chapters ready to be posted... Dunno if it helps to know that or not, just thought I'd put it out there, though.**

**Thanks again- hope you enjoyed this latest update :D**


	33. Chapter 33

A full week passed without sign of Superman. Lois didn't see Clark either, which worried her.

"Any word from Clark, Chief?" Lois asked on her way out of his office, her latest Superman piece in his hands.

"Kent?" Perry glanced up, distracted. "He'll be in this afternoon… actually, his helicopter should be landing right about now."

"His helicopter?"

"Apparently he managed to talk Bruce Wayne into donating the company helicopter for the trip back."

"Bruce Wayne?"

"Of Wayne Enterprises."

"I know who Bruce Wayne is," she snapped, leaving the office quickly and heading for the roof.

The wind was cold on the roof, whipping around the upper cityscape with a vengeance. Lois gave herself a moment to wonder how Clark felt about that sort of wind, any sort of wind. There was a random moment of wonder about the future, if he'd be teaching Jason how to deal with wind changes when airborne, then she realized what she was thinking and shook her head. The pack of cigarettes at the bottom of her purse was nearly empty.

As luck would have it, the moment she went to light her cigarette, a Wayne Enterprises helicopter dropped from the sky, the wind off the blades easily extinguishing the flame even before it had left the lighter.

"Oh, the irony," she said to herself, suddenly remembering how angry she was with Clark.

She couldn't hear what was said between him and the elderly man Lois recognized to be Alfred, Wayne's butler, but it was quick and they shook hands before Clark closed the helicopter door. She couldn't think of anything to say to him, but he seemed to be in the same boat, resolutely watching the helicopter lift off.

He was wearing everything that he usually avoided wearing at the _Daily Planet_. Dark jeans, a brown shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, a shoulder bag she'd never seen before but that looked well-used slung over one shoulder. He was casual, he was natural. He was just Clark.

"Hi," her throat betrayed her, making even that short word crack as it escaped her. He looked surprised that she was even speaking to him.

"Hi."

"Where've you been?"

"Gotham," he said in that evasive way that suggested there was more to the answer than that. She'd never noticed it before.

"Just Gotham?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Mostly," he shrugged. When she didn't lower her eyebrow, he shifted a bit and gave it. "And further north."

"It's nice up there."

"It's better than it was," he was still evasive. "Luthor left it kind of a mess."

She bit her lip. "What sort of a mess?"

"He took almost all of the crystals," he shrugged, obviously feeling awkward talking to her about it, the one he'd worked so hard to keep secrets from. "The father crystal was contained separately, so I was able to repair everything."

"So I suppose you'll be able to talk to your father again now."

"I disabled the AI," he said shortly, stepping past her and hurrying down the stairs as if he thought she would blow up at him if they remained on the rooftop unsupervised for a second longer.

_He disabled the AI?_

Perry was in the middle of an impromptu speech telling everybody how wonderful Clark Kent and people who went the extra mile for a story were in general. He held a thick dossier and was waving it around while Clark stood next to him looking uncomfortable. The attitude, his slumped shoulders and downcast eyes, made him look just as unnoticeable as any oversized suit ever had. She wanted to laugh at herself and all of her colleagues—the act was so obvious when she knew it existed.

The next four hours passed excruciatingly slowly.

Clark was back to his desk, sitting just behind her and tapping away at his keyboard as though she wasn't even there. After a week, he had a full inbox on his email, no doubt. She couldn't concentrate, knowing he was sitting just behind her. There was too much unsaid between them.

And in all honesty, she very much wanted to take him up on the roof and yell at him some more.

- - -

Clark sprawled across his couch, listening to the news. He'd been back in Metropolis for an entire day and managed to avoid being alone in the same room—or on the same rooftop—with Lois.

His article that began as a simple almost obituary-style piece on Ernie and branched into the beginnings of an in-depth investigation into kryptonite trade had been put on that morning's front page, complete with stock pictures of Superman and kryptonite, and a mug shot of Ernie himself. The piece had caused quite a stir; they were even talking about it, or at least its contents, on the news program to which he was listening.

Perry had assigned him an unforeseen number of future installments, planning to run two a week so long as the information kept up. Luckily, Bruce's archives and their supplemental investigation had provided plenty to report on.

Kryptonite trade had sprung out of nothing in the wake of the New Krypton Incident. When he'd lifted the growing kryptonite continent out of the ocean and heaved it into space, relatively small samples of the tainted rock had fallen back to Earth.

The only lucky thing about it was that none of it had continued to grow when it splashed down.

A few as-yet-unidentified maritime corporations had been called into Metropolis Bay to check for the fallen kryptonite and all of it had been reported as destroyed, but there had obviously been a devious middleman at some point. Even with the majority of the kryptonite having been destroyed, the simple fact that some of the real stuff was still out there meant that fake kryptonite could be sold on the black market. There was only one real way to test if it was the real thing, after all.

The kryptonite trade had started up in Metropolis, as that was where the supply was. As things usually went, though, the disease spread. Gotham was the nearest 'big city,' and it had a long history of struggles with corruption. It was only natural that the trade would find a foothold in Gotham's criminal underworld.

The market for kryptonite had found its safe nook in Gotham to grow, make contacts. Bruce did a lot, but he didn't have 'super-hearing 'for criminals to be wary of. The kryptonite trade bounced between Gotham and Metropolis, building with every rebound, every new buyer. A third of the kryptonite flowing from person-to-person was real, but that was a problem in itself.

Clark made a mental note, again, to talk to Henderson at some point—it would be wise to become involved in the process of making the possession of kryptonite, real or fake, an actual official offense.

"_Crime is, once again, on the rise in Metropolis, with Superman still on the mend from the attack on him in Centennial Park_," the newscaster said with accompanying sound effects of the station playing a few snippets of footage from the confrontation. "_We can only hope that Superman will be gracing our skies again soon_."

_Yeah, yeah; I'll clean up your mess for you soon_, Clark thought to himself bitterly.

- - -

Lois towed Jason into their third apartment of the evening, following Marcy Bell, their ever-hassled realtor.

"Two bedrooms, one bathroom, living room, kitchenette," Marcy listed off, checking the folder in her hands as she spoke.

Jason let go of her hand and began poking around the apartment. It was empty, they'd have to provide their own furniture, which would be a hassle to get up all those stairs. And it didn't even have any windows—it was at the very center of the complex, five stories up. But it _did_ have roof access. It was the second most expensive apartment in the complex because of that little ladder up to the roof, and it was the only apartment with that access. It was the only reason Lois was considering it.

"What do you think?" she asked her son, walking into the kitchenette area, checking to make sure there were no creatures from the black lagoon living in the stove. There weren't. No science projects in the fridge either.

"I don't like it," he frowned, looking at the ceiling. "There's no space."

The realtor blinked at him and Lois almost chuckled, just containing herself.

"I guess that's it, then," Lois shrugged, turning to Marcy. "Where's next?"

"That's all of them," the woman frowned at her list of addresses. Half of them had come from Lois's expeditions in the want ads; the other half had come through Marcy's agency.

"Oh, well; I guess we'll go back to the drawing boards," Lois shrugged. The longer she spent looking through ads, the more she felt like she was getting closer to the Perfect Apartment. At this point, she didn't mind staying in the Riverside house for another month if it meant moving into the Perfect Apartment at the end of it.

"I can call my guys, they'll put another list together," Marcy almost looked like she was worried about job-security.

"Sounds good; I'll keep looking through the paper, too," with another shrug, she took Jason's hand and left the boxed-in apartment, making their way through twisting hallways down to the attached parking ramp.

"Why do we have to move, Mom?" Jason asked, slouching in the back seat as they drove through the city.

"The house is too big for just you and me."

"What if Dad came to live with us? _Then_ there'd be three people. It wasn't too big for three people."

Lois didn't quite know what to say to that. "I don't think it'd work out that way, Jase. Sorry."

"Oh," he sighed, pressing his forehead to the window and watching the lights fly by them. He was the only person that wasn't terrified of her driving.

* * *

**A/N: I apologize, once again, for the _huge_ wait between chapter! This time, I actually had a legitimate excuse-- my computer crapped out on me and the tech guys held it hostage for two weeks sorting everything out. Since they're awesome, it all turned out fine. Quite a relief, that. ****Anyway, thank you for your patience. As I said last chapter, there's only a short bit of interlude to get through before I have several chapters all finished off and ready to be posted with more regularity. ****- mak:)**


	34. Chapter 34

Lois lay in bed, glad for a Sunday. If it were a normal Sunday, one that didn't involve her being furious with Clark Kent, she would've already been up and at the Coffee Shoppe, enjoying brunch with him. But it wasn't a normal Sunday. She wasn't sure she'd ever have what she'd thought of as a normal Sunday again.

"Well, I'm just going to have to change the routine," she told herself, finally rolling out of bed and making her way to the kitchen, where the coffee was already percolating. She sent a silent thanks to the genius that had invented timers and poured herself a cup.

If it were a normal Sunday, she'd have already ushered Jason off to a play-date for the afternoon, but they were having an 'us' day. That involved sleeping until they were tired of it, and then Jason was going to pick out a movie, then he'd get to pick out the take-out place they got dinner from. They hadn't had an 'us' day since before Jason started preschool. Not because she'd had a Sunday routine, either, but because Richard had always been around and he wasn't one for lounging. It was always "let's go to the park!" or "let's go for a flight in the seaplane!" "Let's go, let's go, let's go!"

Sipping her coffee and listening for the sounds of a waking little boy upstairs, Lois let herself think. It was coming up on a week since she'd remembered everything about Clark, and she'd spent most of that week trying to ignore everything she remembered in favor of being furious.

Being in love with Clark Kent hadn't been easy last time. He was a complicated person, a very good liar, and he didn't always check in with her before he made decisions that affected both of them. She was almost a spot-on reflection of that, though she hated to admit it.

Their chemistry had been amazing from the start. It had even carried over to their working relationship, where he'd pretended to be an idiot. She'd _still_ liked him then. And, ironically enough, it was liking office-Clark that had made her like Superman even more after she had the inkling that they were the same person. It had become a game to get him to fess up. She hadn't understood why he'd want to be seen as an idiot when he obviously wasn't.

Ah, but he was so _complicated_! It frustrated her to no end. Little bits of him made sense; other bits of him were in complete contradiction when she tried to fit them in place. He was like one of those giant puzzles, the 1,000 piece doozies that Lucy was so fond of that drove Lois up the wall. The kind with water or sky in them, with reflections, pieces that could go here, or there; she was never able to figure out just where they fit other than somewhere in the damn puzzle.

She had all the pieces to his puzzle, now she just had to fit them together right.

She sighed, refilling her coffee mug.

Bruce Wayne had, oh-so-cryptically, told her that Clark was deep waters. That, she knew well enough, fit into his puzzle. His sister, for example. He didn't really talk about her, nor did he talk about his father, but their deaths practically defined the way he led his life. Trying desperately to keep others from feeling the same loss he did when it came to lost family. The roots of his hero complex, per se.

And understanding that little aspect was like finding a corner piece in Clark's puzzle.

The deep waters comment also defined Clark's temper. It was kept far from the surface, very different from her own. Jason got that from him, luckily. Neither were likely to blow up when they were angry, but they did let things simmer, way down. Jason had once snapped at Richard about some little thing and revealed later to Lois that he was still angry about something that had happened months and months earlier and it had finally boiled its way to the surface. Similarly, Clark was very good at keeping interviews mellow, but he held grudges. The mayor's aide when he'd first come to Metropolis had made lots of hayseed jokes while they waited for an interview—months later, when the mayor was finally sacked for his off-the-record activities, Clark had made sure the aide was caught in the fallout. The man had deserved it, having overlooked the illegal activities for years as long as he got his cut, but it had been a brutal wake-up for Lois where her partner was concerned. She'd even laid off the hayseed jokes for about a month.

Clark was his mother's son, but he was also his Kryptonian father's son. He cared deeply about individuals, about stories, about _people_; it was what made him a great journalist. At the same time, he cared for the whole. He saved individuals hoping that in saving just one more person, he might save the planet. She knew that much from her official-unofficial interviews with Superman from before he'd left. Those late nights they'd spend on her balcony talking after she'd turned off her tape recorder. He'd had such a wide world-view and she'd had such a limited one. He'd told her about architecture around the world, fashions, little mannerisms the tour books never talked about.

She'd realized only recently that his love of architecture had come from his uncle, and his high school girlfriend had gone into fashion after graduation. And his mother noticed everything, could spot a lie a mile away. Those traits that made him such a useful hero, so able to blend into the city in which his identity needed to be a secret even as he saved them all, came from Kansas.

Sky piece? Water piece? Object, or reflection?

"Mommy, why are you crying?" Jason asked. She didn't know how long he'd been standing in the doorway watching her hold onto her cup of coffee, but there he was, wrapped up in his big fleece blanket, prepared for a day of relaxation, looking just like a miniature Clark with his face all scrunched up in worry.

"I'm not crying," she said, only realizing after-the-fact that she was indeed crying, cheeks wet with tears when she reflexively moved to check.

Jason gave her a pointed look that was pure Lane and took his usual spot at the breakfast table without looking away.

"Don't worry, munchkin; I'm okay."

"Why were you crying, though?"

"I was just thinking about something, Jason. I'm okay, really. What can I make you for breakfast?"

"It's lunchtime."

"What's for lunch, then?"

And, bless him; he let her change the subject.

- - -

Clark wasn't sure when the last Sunday he'd been into the bullpen was. It would've been _years_, back before he'd left for Krypton. Probably the Henderson case, when it had all been a rush to cover the trial and talk to the investigators at the same time, piece it all together and write it out to meet the deadline.

He didn't know what else to do with himself, though, so here he was.

"Kent. What're you doing here?" Perry snapped, walking from the break room with a steaming cup of coffee and a crisp mock-up of the layout.

"I, uh, had some spare time this weekend. I wondered if you could use some help in here today, uh, sir?"

"It's your day off, Kent. Get outta here."

"Sure. S-sorry, Chief."

"And don't call me Chief!" Perry barked, but his door was closed and Clark wouldn't have been able to hear it if he wasn't from a different planet.

Not knowing what else to do—he'd already cleaned his apartment, even vacuumed the sofa—Clark got on the elevator and punched the lobby button, but he was out of the escape hatch in the top before it had gotten so far as a floor below the bullpen.

He flew above the clouds, meeting the unfiltered sunlight for the first time since the incident in the park. He hadn't felt well enough to reach the height, in all honesty. Now that he had, though, Clark relished it.

The wind in his hair, the light on his skin—there was little else he could ask for in that last burst toward a full recovery.

He flew west, across the country, still above the clouds. He passed over familiar stretches of land—Gotham, Philadelphia, Chicago, Smallville—and kept going. He'd turned a bit south, was enjoying the light reflected back at him from the desert somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico.

Suddenly, he wasn't alone.

"Heeeeyy!" one of the men said, though he was quickly several hundred yards lower. There were a half dozen of them, all in brightly colored outfits that flapped in the slipstream and black helmets to match the black bags they had firmly strapped to their backs.

Sky-divers.

He'd passed right through the center of the circle they formed, holding each others' hands to keep together. It was pure luck that he hadn't crashed through them; it probably would've caused a few lost limbs, in all reality. Kicking himself for not paying attention, but amused at the same time, he tilted and shot down to their level. They were still falling and still had awhile to fall 'til they opened their shoots.

"Hey, Superman!" the same man who'd spoken before said, grinning madly, his face obscured by massive tinted goggles.

"Hello," Clark said, his body perpendicular to theirs in order to match their velocity. "Having fun?"

"Hell yeah!" a couple of the divers said, the rest grinning just as madly as the first man. Clark smirked at them.

"So what brings you to this patch of sky? Feeling better?" a woman asked him, she wore a neon yellow jumpsuit compared to the first man's fire engine red.

"I am much better, thank you," Clark smiled that trademark suave smile. "And I just happened to be flying by, actually."

"No major crises today?" a woman in blue asked. Clark shrugged, then realized they probably couldn't pick up the gesture at their current angle. He reoriented himself so that he could've been standing at the center of their circle, rotating slightly in the air currents.

"Not that I've heard. Yet, at least. The day is young."

"That it is, that it is," the man in red replied, still grinning. Clark wondered if his face was always like that or if it was the wind. Or maybe he just really enjoyed falling.

"Alright, guys, time to let go of each other," the man in the blue jumpsuit said; his helmet had the sky-diving company's emblem on it, marking him the 'jump commander.' Clark would've chuckled if the man's face wasn't so serious-looking. Around him, the divers disengaged, immediately drifting apart.

Clark slowed his descent, watching the blips of color fall and fall, nearing the ground below. After another minute, the shoots began popping open. Not a single miss-fire. Knowing when he wasn't needed, Clark continued on his flight, angling back to the space just below the minimal cloud-cover that he'd been soaring through before he'd almost literally run into the sky divers, then he continued on up to the lower edge of the atmosphere.

He was diverted for the rest of the afternoon after another few minutes, sending him doubling back toward Georgia and a pile-up in Atlanta that took more than a bit of sorting out.

- - -

Jason had opted Italian, and chosen "Hook," with Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams, for his dinner movie. Lois wasn't sure if she was spoiling him or playing her unfair advantage toward winning him over from his father even though it wasn't a competition.

As it was, they both had pasta sauce all over their faces as they watched Jack and his sister plead with their father to fly up and touch their hands. Lois frowned at the irony of the idea of a flying father—particularly the end bit in which he was a sword-fighting-flying-father. So much for ingratiating through unfair advantage.

She sighed, mind ever drawn back to Clark.

"Scuze me for a minute, okay bud? I've got to go call Aunt Lucy."

"You're gonna miss the best part! Imaginary dinner!"

"It'll be a quick call, I'll be _right_ back."

"M'kay," Jason sighed, reinvesting himself in the movie and slurping another noodle. Pasta sauce shot off the end of it and landed adorably on his nose.

"I have a question for you, Lucy," she said the moment her sister picked up, shooting straight on past the formalities.

"Okay, shoot."

"_Why _do you like puzzles?"

"What?"

"Why do you like puzzles? I don't get it."

"Um. Because they frustrate me, I guess."

"What?"

"I like to figure them out."

"But you always take them apart, put all the pieces back in the box, all scattered up!"

"Yeah, but what's the fun in gluing them together or something?"

"Hanging the thing on the wall and showing it off? You put 'em together for the picture, after all."

"I put them together because it's fun to figure them out."

"It's frustrating."

"That makes it worth it when you finally put all the pieces together."

"Ugh, you make no sense," Lois sighed and hung up, knowing Lucy wouldn't be offended. They'd been sisters too long for a non-sequitor conversation to interrupt the normal flow of life.

"Hurry, Mom! It's the part!"

"Don't want to miss the part," Lois chuckled, rolling her eyes and bringing a wet washcloth back with her.

- - -

Monday was, in a word, awkward.

Clark managed to duck out of the bullpen for most of the afternoon under the guise of interviewing Henderson for the kryptonite articles. The crop of small crimes that had been flourishing in Superman's absence was easily put to a stop in a series of late afternoon fly-overs and another few swoop-ins that ended back at the police station.

He had to go back to the bullpen eventually, though. He crossed paths with Lois for an interminable half-hour between the time he arrived and the time that she had to leave to pick Jason up from Summer Spectrum.

"Clark," she said right before she left, she'd already packed up her briefcase and had her purse over her shoulder.

"Y-yes?" she scowled at him.

"I need you to watch Jason tomorrow," she was still scowling.

"Really?" he hated how hopeful he sounded, and she only scowled deeper.

"Yes. I'll be out all evening."

"Um, okay," he said, losing a bit of confidence, wondering what she'd be doing all evening. Wondering if he should be jealous.

"You know where his Summer Spectrum class meets," it was an accusation. "Just pick him up there at four."

"Okay; sure, Lois."

She stalked out. Clark felt a weight settle onto his chest. He was still frowning a minute later when his phone rang.

"_Daily Planet_, Clark Kent."

"_It's Bruce._"

"Hi."

"_I've got some information for you_."

"Okay… Should I come have a look at it, or are you going to read it to me?"

"_Anytime tonight would be great_."

The line went dead. Clark rolled his eyes and hung up, then turned his frown toward the monitor to finish working out the kinks in the next installment of the kryptonite articles.

* * *

_AN: Hullo, sorry it's been so long, as always. We have now reached the point where I've managed to bridge the beginning chapters with the middle chapters that I'd pre-written, therefore I might actually manage to update with some semblance of regularity for awhile, here. Woot. Expect the next update sometime this weekend!_


	35. Chapter 35

The end of August brought several things to pass in Metropolis. The first was the installation of Henderson's Kryptonite Division within the police, an office devoted to collecting, destroying, containing and monitoring kryptonite, doubling the attempt to stem the flow. Bruce, as Batman, and Gordon in Gotham had been less successful starting a similar program of their own, but that had been expected.

The second event was the beginning of Joe's trial in open court. Of course, Lois, Richard, Perry, and Clark were all called to testify against him. The four of them were placed in the same room, closed-in and alone, for the first time since Richard had left Metropolis. Lois sat by Perry and avoided looking at them all.

To call it awkward would've been the understatement of the century. The zenith of the experience was when Richard had pretended not to notice one of Jason's inhaler's stashed in Clark's briefcase.

Clark had been paying more attention to the outside world than to the tension in the room, a distraction that hadn't helped things any. The world at large was mostly quiet so far as major crimes and disasters went, but it still had him edgy. He didn't even notice the serious look Perry had fixed on him through the time they shared the waiting room.

- - -

"Dad," Jason said, looking up from his coloring at the kitchen table the moment Clark walked through the back door into the kitchen of Rick's house. It was very much like the Kent farmstead, but it was in the heart of suburbia and definitely decorated by an aging bachelor. Jason had a half-eaten plate of chips and ham sandwich next to him, his coloring pages and crayons spread out around him in a manner that definitely reminded Clark of Lois in the middle of a project.

"Yes, Jason?" Clark asked, running a hand through his hair and glancing around in search of his uncle—Rick had sportingly agreed to watch Jason on three seconds' notice when there had been a desperate call for Superman over the dinner hour while Lois was, once again, mysteriously in need of Clark's babysitting ability, though he wasn't sure the term 'babysitting' applied when he was watching his own son. He also wasn't sure if she was actually busy or just being nice in a roundabout sort of way and providing an opportunity for him to spend time with his son.

"Why is Mom mad at you?" Jason asked, setting his crayon aside and examining his completed picture instead of meeting Clark's eyes—the tidy lines of Jason's crayons depicted Lois, Clark and Jason all sitting on a checkered picnic blanket together in the park eating lunch and a dog that looked a bit like Shelby holding a Frisbee nearby. Clark's heart sank a little in his chest.

"It's complicated."

"That's what Mom said," Jason sighed, beginning to pack his papers together, handing a few pictures to Rick for his fridge before snuggling into his father's chest for the flight back to Metropolis.

-

For the rest of the night, after Clark had put Jason to bed in his bed, which was much too big for such a little boy, the Kryptonian contemplated the question. All things considered, he should've had a better answer for his son. How many kids had he read about, seen for himself, or heard about—or even known, back when he was a child—whose parents fought, who spent so many hours wondering what was wrong with their family, what was wrong with them.

He loved Jason—he loved _Lois_—too much to let his life spiral into a continuation of the scenario. He couldn't think of a way out of it, though. Lois would be angry with him until she decided otherwise. Anything he could do—and he had tried a few things—would be met with violence, the cold shoulder, or just ignored completely. If she was giving even Jason vague answers about the argument, things were just as bad as they could be.

The ball was in her court and she was much too stubborn for his own unrelenting attempts to open channels of communication, to mend fences, rebuild bridges, all that, to have an incredible impact.

* * *

_AN: Well, there's a scrap of a chapter... more (longer, too) next week!_


	36. Chapter 36

It turned out that Jason was the one to force Lois to communicate with Clark beyond perfunctory work conversations and 'you need to pick up/watch Jason at such-and-such a time.' On September first, a Monday, Jason began first grade, and he insisted they both be present to see him off. He would be taking the bus for the very first time, having been driven to the preschool-level.

Lois had gone into full-on mother mode, the look she sent Clark upon his arrival _daring_ him to mention it. She'd had a camera out and was photo-documenting the morning. Jason had a brand new outfit—first graders were required to wear the school uniform—and everything: gray slacks and shiny black shoes with a button-up, pale blue shirt and an adorable little navy jacket over a dark gray sweater-vest.

Clark couldn't imagine wearing a similar getup when he had attended the first grade. Of course, his school experience and childhood in general had been very different to Jason's. Jason's life was already very different from Lois's as well, Clark reflected, watching her snap photos and fuss over his hair and collar, making sure he had his sack lunch and milk money.

Jason beamed despite the rain as they all walked down the street to his bus stop together, Lois holding an umbrella over herself and Jason, Clark walking next to them under his own. Other children in the neighborhood were gathering at their bus stops, too, with colorful umbrellas held over them. There was a handful other kids in the neighborhood that went to Metropolis Private with Jason, all of them arriving with their parents and mingling with each other. The public school bus stop was just a few driveways down on the other side of the street, swarming with kids and parents as well. The parents at both stops were tenser than they had been in years previously, looking around more frequently, fussing over their children more—the existence of the Napper Neighborhood, despite the recent reprieve in kidnappings, had them all on edge.

Clark had to admit that he was more wary than he'd expected to be, too. He searched the faces in the crowd, matching them up with houses, spouses, and children. Nobody was out of place, he relaxed. To one side of him, Lois relaxed a little bit as well.

"Bye, Mom! Bye, Dad!" Jason said, hugging them both tightly when the bus pulled up to the stop.

"Bye, Jason; be good, have fun!" Lois said, holding him tightly just long enough for Jason to begin squirming, watching glumly as he turned and hugged Clark, too.

"Bye, Jason," Clark repeated, giving the boy a pat on his back as he hopped off the curb and got on the bus, oblivious to the wet. "See you later."

Jason waved from the window, grinning broadly at the pair of them. Then the bus disappeared around the corner. The other parents were making their way back to their houses, hurrying to get out of the rain and into their hybrid cars to buzz off to work or to return to their morning paper and coffee. Beside him, Lois seemed to be forcing herself not to cry. Clark found himself x-raying through the houses and watching the bus continue its route. Jason was sitting in his seat next to a boy from down the block, talking about how awesome Batman was.

"I do this every year," Lois said, seeming angry with herself, when Clark finally reigned his senses in and looked at her. Without thinking, he reached out and squeezed her should gently before following her back to the house she used to share with Richard in silence.

They entered the house, flapping out umbrellas in the foyer, hanging jackets up to dry. It was still early; they had time before their days had to begin.

After an awkward moment, Lois retreated to the kitchen to make tea. Clark, not sure what else to do with himself, followed.

Lois kept her eyes on her task, glaring at the kettle as she waited for the water to heat up. Clark, not sure what he was supposed to do with himself but unwilling to leave, looked at the kettle as well. After a minute, he took off his glasses, as they were smeared with rain anyway, and set them on the center island so that he could use his heat vision and speed up the process.

Lois didn't seem to notice that the kettle whistled faster than it usually did. If she did, she ignored it. She poured out two mugs and set them to steeping, then she finally looked at Clark; she seemed entranced by the fact that he wasn't wearing his glasses. She couldn't look away.

"You lied to me," she finally said, bracing herself with both hands on the island between them and glaring her best glare. The one that made him feel small and insignificant and as though he had a scrap of something embarrassing from his last meal clinging to his face.

"I did," he confirmed, standing with his arms at his sides across the island. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with any of his body parts—hands at his sides, in his pockets, folded across his chest? stand square on both feet, lean to one side or the other, lean on the table? tilt his head to the side, keep it straight forward, look down at his feet? The awkward farmboy part of his office persona had never been that large of a stretch from reality.

"You're Jason's father."

"I am."

"You're from Kansas."

"Yes."

Lois glared at him for another moment before she began pacing, biting her thumb nail, obviously trying to reconcile everything she knew about Clark with everything she knew about Superman. It looked like it hurt.

"I think I'm in love with you," she said, stopping the pacing to look at him from across the island again, and he could tell that she meant it, but she said it like she was telling him she had gangrene eating her foot off.

"I love you, Lois. I love you so much I don't have the words," he stopped, seeing as his voice was about to crack with the emotion of the statement, meanwhile his inner journalist wanted to kill him for the cliché.

"But I don't _know_ you!"

"You know me better than anybody."

"What about Bruce Wayne?"

"He's been my friend for a long time," Clark allowed, shifting a bit, leaning casually against the island, deciding to be comfortable with the conversation because there was no way out of it. "He has a certain insight; however, you know more about _me_, my stories, my personality, _both_ personalities…"

She sat down in the chair across from him; he could see the gears turning behind her eyes. He wondered how long she had been thinking on these things, how many circles she'd put herself through before finally breaking down and talking to him.

"I don't know who I'm in love with," she sighed, her face in her hands.

The statement sufficiently killed the mood Clark had forced. "I understand," he admitted hating that he did, hating that his thoughts directed him to some petty Lois with blue and red stars in her eyes, dazzled by the flying man in spandex and a cape.

"Do you?"

"Would you like to keep putting the puzzle together or would you like another piece?" he asked only somewhat sadly, unable to keep from smirking.

"Screw your puzzle, your puzzle sucks."

He chuckled, but sobered quickly, speaking when she met his eyes again; "You were in love with an illusion."

There was a moment of silence as he watched comprehension dawn behind her eyes, tears forming anew.

"Is that what you thought?"

"I had to leave, I couldn't go back to the old status-quo, and all the other options put you in too much pain."

"You left me _alone _and _pregnant_ because you thought it would help my emotional well-being?"

"I didn't know you were pregnant!"

"You _would'_veif you'd _stayed_?"

"I was an idiot. I was, I _am_, in love!"

They were quiet for a long time. Clark couldn't think of anything to say, so he watched Lois' eyes as they went glassy, focusing down on her hands resting again on the island countertop without seeing them.

"Earth to Lois," he finally said, reaching over and touching her hands to snap her out of it. They didn't have much time—never did, it was always work (he had to be in for the morning meeting, she was due in court for the last of her testimony in Joe's trial) or somebody needing Superman's help or some other interruption— and once they'd begun there were certain things that needed to be said. It gave him a small bit of hope, though, when she didn't snatch her hands away from his touch.

"Shouldn't it be 'Krypton to Lois,' coming from you?"

"What?"

"You're from Krypton, not Earth. Shouldn't it be 'Krypton to Lois'?"

"I suppose…?"

"How could you _lie_ to me like that?" she asked, switching gears too quickly for him to follow. She'd gone from thoughtful to snarky to angry in the space of a minute and he wasn't sure how to react.

"It's more complicated than that and you know it."

"Exactly!"

"What?"

"Ex-_act_ly."

"Lois, I'm having trouble following prettymuch every part of this conversation."

Lois took a calming breath before starting to pace again. Again, Clark watched her, not sure what to do with himself. He settled for staying still as he was, eyes following her progress from one side of the room to the other.

"I _know_ how complicated all this is. You said yourself that I know you better than anybody," he wasn't contradicting her, but her shoulders were set, on the defensive. "But I feel like I don't know you at all!

"I knew the hero from before you left, even if I try to avoid you know, and I _knew_ the klutz from the office from before, and I know you now. Hell, I fell in _love_ with you all over again. Do you know, do you have any _idea_, how frustrating that is?

"And then to realize, remember, that you're the same person?!

"Before, I had my suspicions. I had my plots; I remember that. And you were _entertained_ by it; we _flirted _ALL THE TIME! It _worked_!

"This time, these past months, you were two different people. I could be fuming angry at Superman, and kissing Clark, or thinking about kissing you, or…" she cut herself off by angrily swiping away a few tears. Clark wanted to move around the island and hug her, but he knew better. He settled for a nervous sort of shift of his feet.

"And then to _remember_," she took a shuddering breath and stopped pacing to look at him. "To remember the flirting and romance—to remember what it felt like to be loved by _all_ of you…"

"All of me never stopped loving you, Lois."

"But you _left_!" she cried. "You took those happy memories and left me empty and confused. And both parts of you left—my best friend was suddenly gone, too. Both halves of my support system went missing when I discovered I was pregnant and needed you. Then there was only poor Jimmy, and it was too much for him; and the boss' nephew who I'd had a one night stand with before I knew who he was!"

"I'm sorry; I'm so sorry."

"I _know_ you are!" she flung herself back at the counter, leaning heavily against it. They were quiet.

"I'll leave, if you want me to," he finally, reluctantly, offered.

"Clark!" she looked like she was about to get up and hit him over the head. "That's the _problem_!"

"What?"

"I don't _want_ you to leave!"

"You don't?"

"No!"

"But I hardly deserve to even be _near_ you, after what I put you through…"

"Quit being so selfish!"

"What?"

"You're only thinking of yourself! How _you_ don't deserve to be here, how _you_ have all these heavy secrets to keep for yourself."

"But, Lois, being around me made you _miserable_."

"I remember."

"So?"

"I was more miserable without you."

"What?"

"_Leaving_ is NOT the solution. Especially not with Jason around. He needs you as much as I do."

"You need me around?" he was honestly confused beyond belief. Lois Lane admit she needed somebody? Needed _him_?

"Yes. I do." It looked like the most difficult admission she'd ever made.

"Oh."

She laughed but sobered quickly.

"Clark," she fixed him with a very serious look that made him nervous. "I need to be able to get mad at you without worrying that you'll erase my memory and leave the planet."

"I'm never going to leave the planet again, no matter _how_ mad you are at me."

"And my memory?"

"I won't mess with your memory again. Unless you tell me to."

"Why would I… _Clark_," she rolled her eyes, exasperated with him. "I'm never going to want you to erase yourself from my life."

"You don't know that."

"I do."

"I don't get it," he admitted. She said nothing. "How can you still love me? Still stand to even be in the same _room_ as me/"

"I'm so mad at you I can hardly stand to be in the same room as you," she said, glaring harshly. It didn't help clarify anything for Clark; he almost offered to leave the room. "But I love you too much to want you gone forever."

He blinked at her.

"I'm mad that you left, that you took my memories without permission, that you lied to me when you came back, that you would've kept on lying to me—_don't_ deny it," she was glaring, but she was calm. He was in uncharted territory and he wasn't sure that was a good thing. "I'm mad that you wouldn't even give me a choice, a _chance_!"

He blinked again.

"And I'm mad because I'm still in love with you despite all that," she said it so quietly and looked so very put out that, again, he wanted to move around the counter and give her a hug, and again he didn't.

For a moment, she looked like she was going to say something else, then she stood, walked toward the door, turned back, turned back to the door again, then to him again, and finally left the house by the sliding glass door through the living room. Clark blinked and refocused, watching her pace the patio in the back yard, seeming as oblivious to the rain as Jason had been in his excitement to get onto the bus to first grade.

Clark debated for only a moment before following her. She was soaked to the bone when he came up behind her, her pre-work wear and curls matted to her shape.

"Oh," she said when she turned to pace back in the direction she'd come, bringing herself about to face him.

"I love you," he told her. She turned around and paced away, but paced back in his direction after a moment. "Sweetheart." She paced away. When she turned back, the look on her face clearly displaying the heart-wrenching argument she was having with herself. "I don't deserve a second chance… but I'm going to ask you for one anyways."

She paced away from him, turned back and came to a stop a meter away from where he stood.

"Please."

She brought her thumb up to her mouth and yanked it away to point an angry finger at him. "If you hurt me again, I will turn you over to Luthor myself."

His eyes never left hers as he took the pointing hand in both of his own and pulled her close, holding her palm against his chest and cupping her face when she was within reach. "If I ever hurt you again, I will seek him out myself."

Lois gave a little, entirely uncharacteristic, sob and wrapped her other hand around his neck, pulling his face down to meet hers.

- - -

Lois spent the morning sitting in the waiting room outside the courtroom, waiting to finish her time on the stand at Joe's trial. Her eye-witness testimony had been given weeks ago, at the same time Clark, Perry, and Richard had all been subpoenaed, but she'd been called back to give further details on the history between Joe and herself, him being her source and whatnot. It was a tedious formality that had to be observed.

Court always made her edgy. As a journalist, she would rather be reporting on a trial than participating in one. And, inevitably, she always found herself remembering the Henderson murders, the trial that had dragged on and on, how it had worn on all participants, especially Bill Henderson… For once, though, she wasn't thinking about distress from years ago. She was thinking about her morning with Clark. The scent of the rain still clung to her hair, which she hadn't been able to dry properly in her hurry to get to court in time.

The thought of Clark, looking just as unkempt as she felt, hair plastered to the side of his face, clothes soaked through…

Forcing her thoughts away, Lois tried to think on the promising schedule of open houses she had lined up for the evening. She'd stopped making Jason visit apartment after apartment with her and left him with Clark instead—she hadn't even thought of Clark's _other_ job until she'd heard Superman was making a rescue on the radio when he was supposed to be watching his son; Jason had explained that Clark had left him with Rick, halfway across the nation, and that had been another reality-check.

The thought of a reality-check sent her back to that morning, watching Jason get on the bus and drive away from him. She still felt foolish for choking up once he was out of sight. She hadn't missed the change in focus in Clark's eyes, though—he'd been following the bus with his x-ray vision, she was sure. She still couldn't believe Jason was in first grade already…

She couldn't believe how easy it had been to kiss Clark, to forgive him. And it was impossible to let him kiss her without having forgiven him—if he could break into her mind and rearrange her memories with a single kiss… it came down to trust, really. And, all things considered, she did trust him, after all.

Occupied with her thoughts, she almost missed when she was called into the courtroom and spent the rest of the afternoon feeling slightly flustered for it. Annoyed, she treated herself to a panini at a restaurant slightly more upscale than she usually allowed herself for lunch, then headed into the bullpen to put in a solid afternoon's work before meeting Jason's bus.

As it was, the extra time she'd spent sitting down for lunch kept her out of the bullpen when the news came in: another body had been found and police suspected it was related to the Napper Neighborhood case. She barely made it out of the elevator, looking over the tops of the cubicles for Clark, before Jimmy was dragging her back inside, checking his lens cap and telling her Clark was already on-site.

Lawrence Carlson's remains had been found that morning, probably just as Lois and Clark were putting Jason on the bus, in a sewer near Bill Ganelon's apartment. They had been happened across when a city crew had been sent out to check out the pipes after residents had complained—they'd expected a blockage of animal corpses or sticks or some combination, not the decomposing remains of a foster father who should've been reported missing months previously. The only problem was that the police discovered that all of his foster children had gone missing as well, and the person Mr. Carlson had been closest to, according to his neighbors, was Bill Ganelon.

"I wonder where CK got to," Jimmy said when they arrived on-scene, beginning to snap photos of the police and city employees gathered around the manhole.

"He's probably around somewhere," Lois said vaguely, eyes on Superman standing next to Chief Henderson with a disturbed look on his face. The look made her worry. Clark, as Superman, was always careful to look stoic, unwavering, solid, confident—he didn't let the horrors that he saw, and he'd seen a lot in his time, affect him.

Yet his face was drawn, his shoulders tense. The surge of butterflies through her middle at first sight of him faded to worried queasiness, watching him stand there looking almost sick with worry, if one knew how to read it.

-

Lois retuned to the bullpen without much to go on. The police had been less than helpful in providing quotes or much information at all, glaring when she suggested she'd just go over their heads and talk to Superman. She knew better than to go to Tracy's Diner to dig deeper.

"Lois!" Perry barked from his office door.

"Yeah, Chief?"

"My office—now."

Belligerently, she printed off what she had and made her way into his office. "Chief?"

"What's the word with that body clogging the sewer you covered this morning?"

"Seems pretty random, but the police were being pretty quiet about it, so there could be more down the pipe yet to come," she said, glancing over the scrap of notes she'd managed to put together since she'd returned to the bullpen.

"Hm," Perry said, eyes roaming her bullet-points, frowning. "Superman was there?"

"Of course," Lois said, rolling her eyes and glancing out at the bullpen—Clark had yet to return from wherever it was that he'd gone to after he'd spoken with Chief Henderson at the crime scene.

"And what did he have to say about the body?"

"I don't know; he spoke with Henderson and then took off," Lois said, dreading what she knew Perry would say next.

"Lois," Perry said, fixing her with a look. "C'mon. Get up on the roof and get a quote from the Boy Scout. You said it yourself; the police are playing it too close to the chest for there not to be more to the story. What's with you lately? Dig deeper, go after it!" he waved her off, "Now get out of my office and get that story done. It's going in the morning issue."

"Sure, Chief," she grumbled, closing the door behind her before he could admonish her about calling him 'chief.'

When Clark returned, he had Jason with him, having picked him up directly from school. Their son was all smiles, his book bag full of his very own first grade books, a notebook, and his first homework assignment. He sat on Clark's lap and regaled them about his first day among the sea of uniformed children he'd admired all through preschool. He talked without end of how much fun it was to ride the bus, how much better recess was in the first grade, even if it was a slightly shorter break than he'd had in preschool, how _awesome _his new teacher was, and how much he was looking forward to riding the bus home the next day—he said the last bit about the bus with a sharp look at Clark.

After awhile, Jason, still beaming, seeming to have sensed the relief in tension between his parents, wandered off to visit Perry for awhile. Lois and Clark turned to look at each other, both with goofy smiles fixed to their faces, hardly unusual for Clark, but not so ordinary for Lois, which seemed to amuse Clark more than anything. His face sobered quickly, though.

"Did the police find something else down there?" she asked, dreading his answer. _He found another child, I just know it…_

"No, just Lawrence Carlson," Clark sighed, sinking heavily into his chair, he seemed to fold into himself a bit, though it wasn't the usual sort of hiding he did in the office so much as his soul seemed sore. "Henderson was very specific about not printing anything yet, but the police are almost certain Carlson's foster kids are among those that were kidnapped. There's no saying if he was in league with Ganelon and the Boss or if he stood up to them when they came for the kids, but…" Clark shrugged. Lois found herself wanting to hug him—he looked so tired, so sad. "Those poor kids, Lois."

"Is that what you were talking to Henderson about at the crime scene?"

"No, Henderson has to look at the broader options, first."

"So, there _could _be another explanation."

Clark gave her a look, reminding her she was usually the cynical one of the pair of them, but she just shrugged.

"There was kryptonite in the sewer, Lois," he said. "Real kryptonite. As much as I'd love to say that somebody just flushed it and it happened to end up among the remains, not even _I_ can pull off that much naïve optimism."

"Oh."

"I think they're the control group," Clark admitted a few minutes later, after she'd passed over her notes and he'd blocked out their piece just a touch too fast.

"What?"

"The control group. For the experiments you heard them talking about."

Lois felt herself go pale, leaning back in her chair and wondering if he could tell her hands were shaking.

-

Lois took Jason home around eight, leaving Clark to finish off the story. Jason was sleepy yet somehow excited for his second day of school. Taking turns too fast, Lois wondered if he hadn't been switched at birth—she could never remember looking forward to school, not even kindergarten when it had been full of fun learning activities and long stints on the playground for recess.

Of course, it was impossible he'd been switched at birth, seeing as he was definitely Clark's son, and she'd definitely slept with Clark, and, more often than not, he was definitely her son, too.

_Maybe he gets the 'enjoys school' thing from Clark…_

"Dammit." She'd been trying _not_ to think of him.

Behind her, Jason giggled and pressed his forehead to the window, looking up at the tops of the skyscrapers as they drove between them, the view obscured by the rain that pelted his window.

* * *

_AN: Expect the next chapter sometime next weekend :)_


	37. Chapter 37

Clark knew that Lois had truly begun to forgive, or had already forgiven, him when she changed the ringer on her cell phone to play the theme from _Close Encounters_ whenever he called. He wasn't sure what to do with that information, of course, but he was glad that it was there.

The article on the dead man in the sewer, Lawrence Carlson, was printed on page three without much notice or comment. No matter that Lois and Clark—and therefore Superman—suspected that there was a definite link between the discovery of a body in the sewer outside Bill Ganelon's apartment and the dead man and his missing foster kids, they couldn't prove anything. They didn't dare bring up the experiments Lois had overheard in the bunker, didn't want to draw attention to it if they could help it.

It made Clark's skin crawl just to think of it.

There were other things to think about, though. With the surfacing of Lawrence Carlson, other things were falling into place.

Lois had gone into the station and looked at photos, identifying both Carlson's missing foster kids as children she'd seen in the bunker when Ganelon's men had kidnapped her. From there, she'd spent the bulk of an afternoon flipping through a portfolio of pictures, all missing kids from foster care. In the hospital before they'd fled to Smallville, she'd gone through several similar portfolios; however, she'd only been shown photos of missing kids as far as three months missing. Judging by the decay of Carlson's body, his foster kids could've been missing almost six months before Lois had been kidnapped.

She only recognized one kid out of all the photos she looked through that afternoon, though. The one was enough to be a connection, though. The social worker in charge of the kid she could identify through the photos was also the social worker who was supposed to be looking in on Carlson's missing fosters. The luck was in the fact that the social worker hadn't gotten word to head for the hills before the police were able to pick him up.

Harry Douglas was gangly and had a charming smile; he looked like a very regular guy. Inevitably, though, he would open his mouth and words would come out, and then it was clear just how very far from any form of 'normal' he was. The man didn't even bother trying to lie to the police, he went on and on about the Boss and what little he knew about the mysterious Boss's plans.

"Last chance, Douglas: Why is he kidnapping these kids?" the detective questioning Carlson asked, obviously tired of the charade; Douglas smiled wickedly.

"I dunno."

"Don't give me that shit."

"There was something," Douglas said, leaning forward with a glint in his eye. "There was word from the bunker."

They looked at each other for a moment. Standing on the roof out of sight and looking down through the building, Superman couldn't help but dread what came next.

"Something about _experiments_."

"Experiments?"

"Yeah. Bill was always talkin' about them; the plans higher up, whining about having to keep the kids alive and well when they were really just waiting to be dissected or something."

On the roof, Clark had to find something to sit down on before he was sick.

-

Later, when Lois and Clark went into Tracy's, the old boys' club was at the bar—TK from missing persons, Henderson, fire chief Ralph Boyd, Adam Franklin and Mark Holm out of homicide, and Emile Sanchez from cold case. Henderson was easily the youngest of them, but also the hardest—his life had been one big crash course in reality and he'd risen through the ranks of Metropolis law enforcement quickly for it.

Though they were closest with Henderson, Lois and Clark had interviewed each of the six of them at one point or another with different results. Clark got along well with TK, Tobias Krenske, but Lois didn't know him all that well, while Clark had never actually spoken with Boyd, the new-ish fire chief that Lois had had more than a few interviews with, as she'd been the one to do a profile on him when he'd taken the position shortly after she'd returned from maternity leave, and then she'd worked with him on a citywide arson spree case the summer before Clark's return. Franklin and Holm were nice guys, if a bit grouchy on occasion. Sanchez was the one of the group Lois and Clark had had the least to do with, as they'd never more than asked him for the particulars of a recently solved cold case that had once been big news and therefore deserved minor _Planet_ coverage—it had been an assignment from Clark's first weeks in Metropolis and Perry had been mad at Lois.

"Shoulda known you two'd be in tonight," Franklin grumbled, but he accepted the shot Clark ordered him.

The night wore on; none of the officers or detectives Lois and Clark spoke to were willing to put anything on the record, or off for that matter, about the newest arrest in the case. Eventually, the diner began to clear out, men going home to their wives, Tracy herself locking the door from the inside and giving the remaining clients and look before retiring for the night.

Lois and Clark ended up in their usual booth with Henderson and Krenske, sipping their drinks mostly in silence, the two officers occasionally telling stories from the years when Clark was gone. Lois was unusually quiet, which made the rest of them edgy. Clark, of course, had been edgy to begin with.

Close to two in the morning, their chuckling over the latest nostalgic story was interrupted by TK's phone chirping from his belt. They cleared out shortly after, returning to the station—a beat cop in Gotham had found the body of a kid they were fairly certain was Charlie Van Buren when he was investigating a domestic disturbance.

"I want to come with," Lois said stubbornly as they waited for a taxi, the others having refused to give them a ride in the cruiser Henderson had called for them.

"And do what, Lois?" Clark sighed, emotionally exhausted if nothing else. "What's the miracle excuse to explain you showing up in Gotham five minutes after you left Tracy's in Metropolis?"

"What's _your_ excuse?" she glared, only slightly unsteady on her feet after so many hours of drinking.

"I'm Superman, Lois," he reminded her, getting her 'I'm _aware_ of that' glare. "I can fly."

"That's not fair," she pouted; another taxi passed them by. "Why am _I _the only one that has to sit home and wait for somebody to bring back news? This is sexism, is what it is!"

"Lois," Clark sighed. Another taxi drove past them without stopping—Lois made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, prompting Clark to drag her into the nearest alley and whirl into the suit before springing aloft. The sudden rush of air—or maybe it was standing in the alley with Clark one moment, Superman the next—had the benefit of rendering Lois speechless.

It was all Clark could do to keep his mind on flying as he held her close. Her pulse roared in his ears, easily double its normal speed since he'd pulled her into his arms and taken flight. It had been quite awhile since they'd last flown together… and she wasn't even all that mad at him anymore, was she?

"That's cheating," Lois said as they dropped through the clouds again, landing on her back porch.

"I hate waiting for cabs," he said, shrugging, stepping into the house after her. She gave him a look that suggested she hadn't been talking about avoiding a cab ride, but he wasn't sure what else was cheating.

"Right."

"I'm going to go find Batman."

"Call me _the moment_ you know something," she instructed, glaring.

"I will," he promised dutifully, turning for the sliding glass door to go back out to the patio, feeling as though he'd definitely escaped _some_ sort of argument. He made a mental note to literally sweep her off her feet more often.

"And don't forget to get Jason from your uncle's in time to get to school. Get him here by seven, if he wants to take the bus; he can't be dropped off by Superman, either, you know," she said it as she got herself a glass of water, knowing full well that he could hear her even though he was already breaking through the clouds again. It was so nonchalant a comment that it made him stop mid-flight and turn back to look at her.

_It's almost like this could be normal for her_, he thought before shaking his head. Life with him would never be normal, not like a life with Richard could've been for her.

With that, he turned and shot off toward Gotham, hoping Bruce would already be on the scene; he didn't particularly like dealing with Gotham PD and they didn't like dealing with him, not even Jim Gordon.

- - -

Lois fell asleep on the couch after less than ten minutes, though she'd only planned to sit down and watch the news until Clark called. Instead, she'd fallen right to sleep with the TV on.

Shortly after six the next morning, she woke to see Superman and his son sneaking in through the sliding glass door to the patio. She had about three seconds to enjoy how cute it was before her hangover made itself known.

"Shit," she said under her breath, but Jason giggled madly anyway. Luckily, Jason was as immune to her language as he was to her driving.

"Upstairs with you," Clark said, chuckling a bit to himself. "Get ready for school. Your bus will be here in forty-five minutes."

"Are you gonna make pancakes?"

"Sure, I'll make pancakes."

"With heat vision?"

"Sure. But only if you go get dressed right now."

"Okay!"

Lois wasn't sure she'd ever seen Jason move so fast. In fact, she had half a mind to have a talk with him in the near future about open displays of super-powers.

"How're you doing?" Clark asked, suddenly wearing a too-big charcoal suit minus the jacket, which appeared folded over the back of the nearest chair. His glasses were folded in the front pocket of his white button-up.

"You didn't call me last night," she reminded him, levering upright and making for the bathroom.

"Yeah, sorry." He didn't look sorry. "I was in Gotham 'til about an hour and a half ago."

"That's a whole hour and a half in which you _didn't call me_."

"I was a bit out of cell service range," he said defensively, crossing his arms over his chest in a very Superman pose.

"Oh?"

"I was doing my morning circuit of the planet, getting some sun and checking on things globally."

"And you couldn't have taken two minutes to call me?" She knew she sounded whiney, but she was hung over and she felt like whining.

"I brought you coffee," he said, pointing to the tall cup from Starbuck's she hadn't noticed before. Glaring, she walked over to it and sniffed—of _course_ he'd gotten her personal hangover cure just right.

"So what did you find out?" she asked, settling in at the kitchen table and watching him roll up his sleeves—first folding back the white shirt, then smushing the blue spandex up to his elbows. He only looked slightly ridiculous when the maneuver was finished.

"It was Charlie Van Buren, we're fairly sure. His dad should be arriving at the Gotham morgue anytime now to identify the body; Batman will call if anything _interesting_ happens—he's racing the police to try and find out whose name is on the lease. The police can subpoena it, but… he has his means, too."

"So Ganelon is in Gotham now?"

"Most likely."

"You think his name's on the lease?"

"I wouldn't doubt it," Clark shrugged.

"And Metropolis cops don't have jurisdiction in Gotham, and the Gotham police aren't exactly renown for their spectacular police work where this sort of thing seems to be involved," Lois sighed.

"Very true."

"So what's the plan?"

"The plan?"

"Don't play stupid, Clark. I know you too well to play that game."

He smirked, acknowledging her statement, but didn't elaborate. Further questioning on her part was interrupted by Jason's arrival, wearing his school uniform sans jacket, which he tossed at the chair in the living room where Clark had stashed his own jacket. Jason proceeded to roll up his sleeves, and look just like a miniature version of his father.

"Pancakes?"

"Right, pancakes."

Lois spent the rest of the morning marveling at a super-power she'd never really seen in action—heat vision. She certainly hadn't seen it put to use in making perfectly golden brown pancakes with nothing but a frying pan and spatula, never turning on the stove. She found herself giggling along with Jason as Clark squinted and winked at the batter, tossing completed pancakes through the air to land perfectly on a plate beside the stove.

- - -

Halloween came upon them out of nowhere. September passed in a blur of jurisdiction issues between the Gotham and Metropolis police, Lois and Clark covering the tension to stay close to their main case. October was a mess of elevated stress levels and heightened frustration.

In October, the results on the lease from the apartment Charlie Van Buren had been found in made it to Metropolis. It had been taken out with a false name and badly fabricated identity; it wouldn't have held up in even the worst neighborhood in Metropolis, but it passed in Gotham. There had probably been a large bribe involved—just another sign of the potential size of the ghost organization involved in the Napper cases.

The fake identity gave way to Bill Ganelon, as expected, but the space had been abandoned with the boy's body within. It had only been discovered by chance, the police noticing the smell after responding to the domestic disturbance next door.

Lex Luthor's prints were all over the abandoned apartment; however, there was nowhere to go with the evidence. There was already a warrant out for Luthor's arrest, adding another didn't make it any more likely he'd be caught. It did produce quite a public frenzy, though. After the _Planet_ printed it, the competition followed suit and the newest Luthor-spotting frenzy exploded.

Through the rest of October, there were no further worthwhile developments. Hundreds of people in Gotham, Metropolis, and more than a few in neighboring states called the hotlines at every gleam of a bald head. Meanwhile, kryptonite dealers out of Gotham were dropping like flies, but most of them were beginners looking for a sick adventure in Gotham at night, they had no good information, let alone real kryptonite. The few dealers that _did_ know anything relevant knew of the Boss but not his real name or identity.

Meanwhile, Lois and Clark had settled into a whole new definition of awkward. It was like magnets, and for awhile they had been facing the wrong way so that their polarities drove each other away, yet now they had turned around again and were drawn to each other. The awkwardness came from their resistance.

It was a never-ending dance to which they both knew the steps but couldn't find the rhythm.

"How do I look?" Jason asked, pulling Lois from her musings. He was going to be Batman for Halloween, which she found incredibly ironic. The son of Superman choosing a cape and cowl over the bold colors of his father's suit. She wasn't sure how to share that irony with Clark anymore.

"You look great, Jason," she chuckled, arranging his cape for him. "Just like the real Batman."

"Mom," he rolled his eyes at her behind the miniature cowl. "The _real_ Batman is, like, _twice _as tall as me!"

"Oh, right," she said, mock-seriously to match his utterly serious look. "Sorry."

Jason favored her with a bright smile, swishing the cape a bit. "Where's Dad?"

"I don't know."

"He said he'd take me trick-or-treating so long as nobody needed his help—can we turn on the news?"

"Sure, honey," Lois said, dreading what they'd find on the news at the same time that she wondered how many kids his age asked to turn on the news.

There was no sign of Superman on any of the channels they checked.

"Where _is_ he, Mom?"

"I don't know, sweety."

"Call him! Will you call him? Can I call him? Where's your cell phone?"

"Here, here," she tossed the thing to him, enjoying the sight of him trying to work the buttons with his gloves and then with the cowl over his ears.

-

It wasn't every kid that got to go trick-or-treating with the real Superman, a good number of them went out with pretend ones, though. Lois spent most of the evening trying not to laugh out loud—Clark had arrived in full Superman regalia and proceeded to take Jason out in costume, pretending to be the most accurate Superman-costumed dad on the block. The irony of 'Superman' and 'Batman' trick-or-treating with the real Lois Lane wasn't lost on any of the neighbors in the least.

In all honesty, Lois couldn't wait to move away from them—they altered between pitying her for what they presumed was Richard having left her, and envied her for her headlines where Superman was concerned.

Lois almost jumped out of her skin when Clark brushed her fingers with the tips of his own.

"Sorry," he mumbled, putting more space between them quickly, glancing down at Jason, who was several paces in front of them, peering into his pumpkin bucket as he walked.

Lois looked across at Clark, who was studiously avoiding her eyes. It had been two months since that kiss in the rain and he hadn't made to touch her since. The time since had been speckled with charged looks and lingering glances, a few soft touches, and he'd held her close the one time they'd flown together, but it all seemed so tentative. She wasn't sure if he was waiting for her to make the first move, or if he was happy with the status quo of their relationship; she had no idea, not an inkling. She knew the steps; she just didn't know when to start moving.

_Mad Dog Lane my ass_, Lois thought to herself, straightening her back ever so slightly before reaching out and slipping her hand into Clark's. His entire being seemed to relax as he stepped closer to her, squeezing her fingers gently as they walked along.

Never in her life had she thought she'd be openly walking down her street holding Superman's hand. Oddly enough, she found herself wanting Clark beside her instead—yearning for goofy glasses and an overlarge jacket instead of the form-fitting suit. Then she'd be able to really lean into him without worrying somebody would catch on that he was the real deal and out their nearly-mended little family and ruin everything.

In front of them, Lois could've sworn she saw Jason smiling a little wider.

* * *

_AN: Sorry, apparantly 'this weekend' now means 'Tuesday after next.' One more chapter left in this (somewhat awkward) bridge bit, it shouldn't take me more than a week to get up, but I know better than to specify a day this time._

_Thanks for reading!_


	38. Chapter 38

It was the perfect apartment. It had taken her till mid-November to find it, but Lois knew it at first sight. Everything about it, even though it lacked any sort of furniture or paint beyond standard beige, fit.

Hawethorn Apartments was a standard apartment complex just inside of what passed as suburbia in central Metropolis. It was a move closer to the Napper Neighborhood, but, all things considered, Clark, living downtown, was closer. It was also a move closer to both her parents and Lucy, but she would be closest to Perry. She most looked forward to the reduced commute, cutting a large portion of the city off her daily drive.

She signed the lease for 12C, the corner apartment on the twelfth and top floor. There was no roof access from within the apartment, but the roof itself was communal, the stairs from the ground floor continuing on up. Most of the roof was taken up by a greenhouse with tidy patches marked with twine for each tenant, the rest was open patio-style, the existing tenants with their folding chairs and cheap charcoal grills. The overall sense of community within the complex was something that had drawn her to the apartment, that and the private balcony.

The apartment was arranged in an L shape with the balcony tucked into the bend. There were three bedrooms, the bathroom, living room, and the kitchen. The bedrooms were arranged on the long side of the L, the living room at the turn, and the kitchen on the short side with the door to the balcony. It didn't have the vaulted ceiling and floor-to-ceiling windows she remembered in Clark's apartment, but it had the space she and Jason needed and held promise for being comfortable.

After signing the lease, Lois promptly took a week off work, packed Jason up to stay with Clark—which seemed to mean Clark picking him up and dropping him off at school, with evenings spent between Martha's, Rick's, and Clark's depending on ever-fluctuating schedules—while she assembled their new home. Perry seemed to be glad she was taking some time off, as, with the Napper case mostly stagnant, she found herself drifting from minor story to minor story, looking for a spark she couldn't find and generally driving Perry up the wall for it.

And so it came to be that the living room and kitchen went from beige to a rusty red, her bedroom pale green, Jason's bedroom the brightest cerulean blue, and the remaining bedroom, which she would turn into her office, and the bathroom darkened to light brown All the floors were light hardwood, making it easy to match the paint.

The movers delivered the furniture the day after the paint dried and, with a few aggressive words and a large tip, put everything in the proper rooms. They even assembled the beds, which was more than helpful. Despite the help with the furniture, there were still stacks and stacks of boxes arranged along the walls in the living room, those labeled KITCHEN stacked with JASON'S ROOM and BOOKS hidden under LINENS. Whatever order that had been present when she'd packed them the first time had been lost in transition.

Light-headed from the fumes and cold from leaving the windows open during the first cold snap of the season, Lois took a break for lunch, sitting out on her new balcony in her winter coat with a cup of hot cocoa and a chicken-salad sandwich, enjoying the view. It wasn't the harbor, but the houses and the two other apartment complexes in sight were at least slightly architecturally interesting.

By the end of her week off, the apartment looked like an approximation of a place she was fairly certain Jason could recognize as home. She'd arranged his bedroom as he'd had it ad the Riverside house, even if it was slightly smaller. The bathroom had the same shower curtain and bathmat, and the same rugs and pictures were on the floor and walls. She'd replicated their patio overlooking the harbor on the balcony overlooking the neighborhood.

"It's smaller," Jason observed when he and Clark arrived Saturday night. They'd taken the stairs up and waved at the new neighbors—again, there was more community in the complex than anywhere she'd lived previously, and the neighbors seemed to be constantly peering out to see who was passing by, or stopping over to offer welcome brownies; Lois wasn't sure if it was a nice change, or obnoxious nosiness. They were both slightly wind-blown; she could see it in the fall of their hair more than any give-away pink in their cheeks.

"Well, it's an apartment, not a house," she reminded him, closing the door behind the pair of them. "What do you think of the colors?"

"I like the blue," Jason said with a big smile on his face, promptly walking straight into the wall between the first bedroom off the living room, his, and the room he was in.

"Careful, Jason," Clark warned, pulling him back before he could attempt to walk through the wall again. Lois blinked, glad Clark had known how to react because she felt more than blind-sided. "Blink for me."

Jason dutifully blinked until Clark seemed satisfied and turned the boy loose. Jason skipped off to his bedroom with only a minor hold-up getting through his door and began unpacking his overnight bag.

"X-ray vision?" Lois guessed, sitting down on the same sofa that had been in the living room at the Riverside house. It had had two overstuffed armchairs to match it, but she'd sold them to her neighbor; there was no space for them.

"We've been working on it for the past few days," Clark said, nodding as he folded his glasses and put them in his breast pocket. He was still dressed for work, though he'd surely left hours previously barring any major breaks in their story, in which case he would've called her. "We were up all Thursday night; he kept seeing through to the skeleton and muscle… It can be quite alarming when you're not expecting it."

"You accidentally look through things sometimes?"

"More often than I'd like to admit," he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile. "Especially when I was younger; it's why I first got glasses. I was constantly looking _through_ layers of things." He chuckled to himself a moment. "I went a whole week navigating the house by memory, Ma putting my dinner on my plate and giving me clock-face directions for them like I was blind, and looking through to the first layer of muscle in everybody and all the animals I saw one summer. After I finished being completely freaked out by it, I started to learn how to control it, how different focuses brought different layers into view. It was easiest, in the beginning, to see the natural view of things with a thick layer of glass between me and the world. Jess figured it out—she was cleaning the outside windows and I was looking out. I smiled at her, glad to see her face when I'd been seeing her bone structure all week."

Lois couldn't help but smile. Of all the times she'd heard Clark talk about his sister it was probably the first that he hadn't sounded sad. The sheer oddity of the base of the conversation didn't seem so abnormal when childhood anecdotes came to play.

"I suppose we should look into getting him some thick glasses, then," she said, unable to keep from smirking. "His high school years will be wonderful."

"As far as I can tell, high school is a plague, glasses or no."

The rest of the evening passed quickly. Jason retold the story of his week with relish—apparently, staying with Dad meant better cooking (some of the dishes he told her about gave her a sneaking suspicion Clark had taken Jason out of the country for dinner a few times), muscling through homework in a quick half hour after dinner, and regular visits with Jemima the goat.

Before she knew it, Lois felt herself relaxing into an evening in with Jason and Clark. The months of tension between herself and Clark didn't seem to matter so much as the months together they had to look forward to, and it was nice to see Jason so happy.

Jason decided it was time for him to go to bed shortly after the clock made its way past 8:30p. They'd been sitting together on the couch watching Clark make a rescue—he'd stepped out shortly after 8p to make what Jason called his 'nightly rounds'—and Jason had disappeared a moment, reappearing wearing his pajamas and a sleepy look. Clark returned just in time to kiss him goodnight.

Which left Lois sitting with Clark on the sofa watching the news.

"So, you're coming back to work Monday?" Clark finally asked, seeming to be attempting to break the silence and the tension that came with it. Lois shifted so that she had one leg folded underneath her and was therefore facing him.

"Yeah; it's about time, too," she said, smiling tensely.

"We miss you in the bullpen.'

"I bet Perry doesn't," she smirked.

"Well. He misses you; he just doesn't miss your whining."

"I do not whine."

"Says you."

"I don't!"

"You do," he insisted, his lips hooking up into a shadow of the famed Superman smirk that had been broadcast so many times on news programs like the one they'd just switched off that it made her laugh. Of course, that set Clark off laughing, and his laugh was contagious.

"Sh, sh," Lois finally said, trying to laugh more softly. "We'll wake Jason."

"He's out," Clark assured her, forcing away the last of his chortling anyway.

And then there was silence again.

Lois shifted, looking around the room for someplace to rest her eyes, for something to talk about. _When has silence between _us _**ever **__been awkward?_ she wondered, only realizing she'd said it aloud when Clark snorted, turning on the sofa so that he was facing her too and smiling.

"We've never quite been in this situation before, though; have we?" he asked with an almost far-off look, as though he was really searching back through his memories for a time when there'd been so much tension between them that a few jokes or a cheesy grin couldn't cut it.

"No, not really," Lois had to admit.

No matter how she tried to stop it, her eyes were drawn to his lips. He had very nice lips, a back region of her brain that didn't speak often informed her.

"_Where's Clark?" Lois asked. It was 8a. and she had just walked in to find her desk lacking a steaming cup of coffee for the first time in four years. She'd glanced at her partner's desk and seen that it was lacking any of Clark's things, all that remained was the plain black phone with its hopelessly tangled cord and the huge desktop computer that belonged to the _Planet_._

"_Er, didn't he talk to you?" Jimmy asked, appearing at the edge of the cubicle area Lois and Clark had shared for the past three and a half years. The cubicle walls, only on Lois's half now, were tacked with articles they had written together, pictures that had accompanied the articles, pictures of them together or with Perry and/or Jimmy or any number of sources. Clark's black walls and clear desk just seemed _too_ clean. _

"_Would I be asking you if he'd talked to me?" Lois asked, face stony. Clark had been acting oddly for the past two weeks, taking phone calls away from her or hanging up if she approached. His random disappearances had greatened and lengthened, and often came without excuses. _

"_I guess not," Jimmy said, giving her that look that made her feel guilty, the one that made him look like a dog with its tail between its legs. _

"_Sorry, Jim—"_

"_LANE."_

_Lois hurried into Perry's office, knowing from the look on his face, if not the tone of his voice, that he had words for her on the topic of her wayward partner. _What have you gone and done now, Clark?_ she wondered to herself, leaving her briefcase and purse at her desk and rushing across the bullpen. _

"_I take it Kent didn't speak to you before he packed up last night," Perry said, motioning for her to close the door behind her. Stealing herself, somehow knowing the conversation ahead would be more miserable than she'd initially anticipated, Lois closed the door and took the seat across the desk from him. _

"_No, he didn't say anything."_

"_That's not like him…" Perry said, almost seeming to be talking to himself. Lois wasn't sure what to make of it. She'd known Perry since she'd been a teenager, interning at the _Planet_ and altogether just tickled to be in the bullpen, though she'd been careful not to let her employers know how excited she was. Perry had known anyway, and he'd remembered her when she'd finally graduated and been looking for her first real reporting gig. He'd 'taken a risk,' so far as the executives were concerned, on a young _girl _just out of college, and it had certainly paid off. She was one of his best, most consistent journalists and they both knew it._

"_Where'd you send him, Chief?" Lois asked. It galled a little that she'd been left out of the loop on what was sure to be a big project—maybe even another undercover assignment, judging by the state of his desk. _

"_Send him? I didn't send him anywhere!" Perry said, almost glaring at her. "He up and quit! Didn't you even know _that_? He gave his two weeks notice just after you two got back from Niagara Falls, cleaned out his desk last night, and turned in his press pass," he said, gesturing to Clark's press pass, which was indeed sitting on the corner of his desk. _

"_Then where did he go?" Lois asked, hating how small her voice sounded. Perry stared at her. _

"_I don't know."_

Perry had let her go looking for him, knowing that if he didn't he would be losing two great reporters instead of just one. She'd crusaded for almost a month, 'til it had become undoubtedly obvious that Superman had disappeared and the crusade had turned into a search for Superman instead. Richard had been a chaperone of sorts, kept her sane by forcing her to put up a front of sanity. She hadn't found Clark and she hadn't spoken of him any more than she'd had to when she'd returned to the bullpen, and she'd forced herself to move on.

"Clark," she sighed, hearing that same small sound from that conversation with Perry so many years ago. At some point during her distraction, he'd moved closer, looking almost concerned for her quiet while her thoughts strayed.

"You were a thousand miles away," he said gently, seeming to pick up on the melancholy of her memories. His hand was hovering near the side of her face, as though he wanted to touch, to stroke her cheek, to run his fingers through her hair, but he wasn't sure how she'd feel about it.

"No, just a couple of years ago," she muttered, tipping her head so that he cupped her cheek. He seemed more than a little startled that she would want to be near him when she was thinking about when he'd abandoned her.

"I'm sorry."

"Clark," she said sharply, giving him a look to match. He made to draw away, but she grabbed his hand, kissing his palm and holding it close to her. "I want you to promise me something."

"Anything." His readiness to promise her anything, and she knew he meant _anything_, was almost alarming. She wasn't sure if the fact that it was Clark, father of her child, probable love of her life, that was agreeing to something so open-ended, or the fact that he was also Superman was more disquieting.

"Never leave me again. Always come back. Always be here with me. Don't ever leave. Promise you won't leave me again," the last bit came out a sob that she immediately detested. In fact, she detested the entire request; she'd never felt more needy in her life. But it was an honest request, no matter how much it sounded like a line straight out of a B movie.

Fact was, her life _felt_ like a bad movie some days, particularly the bit where she'd been pregnant and alone, unsure who the father was.

Clark blinked at her.

"_Promise_."

"I promise."

"You _promise_?"

Clark gave her a look that clearly read 'Lois, you sound like you're in about first grade,' and then he kissed her. She reached for him, intending to pull him closer, but he was stronger; it didn't seem to take him more than a thought, let alone any effort, to pull her onto his lap.

Lois was well aware that she was a small woman, the very definition of petite. She was also aware that Clark was a large man, huge. It really didn't matter, though—they fit perfectly, there on the sofa. He encompassed her. He had one hand in her hair on the back of her head, the other wrapped around her waist as she straddled him, her arms wrapped around his neck, both holding tight. There were no joints poking awkwardly into rib cages, no snag of clothing, no snarl catching on his fingers. Things just fit.

A strange tingling sensation spread across her scalp and down her spine, then out across her skin until every inch of her was tingling. It wasn't like a good kiss tingle, though it was certainly a good kiss, nor was it the pins-and-needles tingle of numbness. It was gone the moment she noticed it, though, fading away to nothing as Clark's fingers ghosted along the gap between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her t-shirt.

"_Lois_—"

"Bedroom," she whispered, halfway through unbuttoning his shirt, increasingly frustrated with the fact that he had another layer beneath his work suit.

The air seemed to slip around them as Clark carried her to the room at the end of the hall. There were boxes stacked against the walls, her closet doors were wide open and empty within, her bed standing in the middle of the room, unmade.

Somehow, the door clicked gently closed behind them as the mattress springs groaned under their combined weight as Clark lay her on the bed. She tossed her shirt aside and looked up at him, taking him in as much as he was taking her in.

"How do I get this off?" she asked, fingering the outline on the 'S' shield visible between the loose flaps of his lapels.

"There's a latch," he murmured, gesturing to the side of his neck, leaning down and trailing his lips across her jaw as his fingers trailed delicious heat down her shoulders to work the clasp of her bra.

"_Clark_," she moaned when his lips found her breast.

-

"Dad!" Jason cried the next morning when he entered the kitchen to find Clark standing in his boxers and yesterday's shirt, trying to get the coffee maker to work.

"Morning, Jase," Clark said groggily, wondering if it was worth the fight, if he should just fly to Starbucks, jump-starting on the morning rays of the sun.

"Are you living in this apartment now, too?" Jason asked, climbing onto a chair at the kitchen table and grinning widely.

"No—Mom and I had a bit of a sleepover last night," Clark said, not sure what the protocol was for talking to his son the 'morning after.'

"Oh. Didya have fun?" he asked, as oblivious as ever, swinging his legs. "I went to a sleepover once, at Joey's house, and it was lots of fun. We watched a movie and had popcorn and stayed up almost all night! But there was this other sleepover, at Matt's for his last birthday, and his mom made us all-natural ice cream to go with the cake and it tasted awful, and wouldn't let us watch movies, and we ran out of board games about eight o'clock and then we went to bed and it wasn't nearly as much fun as the other one."

"Yeah, we had lots of fun," Clark couldn't help but smirk, watching Lois make her way, looking groggier than he felt, into the kitchen. Luckily, she'd found her pajamas before she'd left the bedroom. She half-stumbled across the kitchen and put the coffee maker in order with a few quick twists and a slam, leaning against the counter and glaring at the little machine as it began to percolate.

"Can we go to the zoo today?" Jason asked, hopping off the chair and getting a box of cereal out of one of the boxes sitting on the floor by the sink.


	39. Chapter 39

"An' Mr. Chen is the new recess monitor this year," Jason explained, sitting in a rolling chair stolen from another cubicle, spinning it around and around in the entrance to Lois and Clark's cubicle-area. "He's really nice. He helps everybody get their winter stuff on before we go outside, and he helps everybody get it all off again, and he even holds my spare inhaler for me while I play! I never need it anymore-- only twice last week! --but he says that it should at least be outside with me, just in case. And he doesn't get mad if we throw snowballs, so long as we don't throw any at anybody's face!"

"He sounds great," Lois said distractedly. Jason glowered at her the next time his spinning brought him to face her. Clark couldn't help but chuckle; it was a testament to how distracted Lois was with her latest fluff assignment that she didn't turn a glare on him.

"So how did everybody like your glasses?" he asked his son. The glasses they'd special-ordered for Jason had come in just in time for the last week of school before Christmas break began—"No, Dad, it's _Winter_ Break," Jason was always reminding him—giving Jason a week to get used to wearing the glasses at school, and giving his peers a chance to see him wear the thick lenses.

"They were fine," Jason said, sounding altogether a little too neutral about it.

"Just fine?" Clark asked

"Nobody teased me, if that's what you mean," Jason said, tipping his head back to watch the ceiling as he spun. His glasses—wire frames, not as thick as Clark's, in a square-ish shape that complimented the square-ish shape his jaw had begun to exhibit—glinted in the light from the fluorescents above.

"So what's the matter?" Clark pressed, putting a foot out to stop the spinning. Jason sat up again, looking decidedly uncomfortable. Clark raised an eyebrow.

"Tasha thinks I look cute in glasses," Jason groaned, tipping his head back against the chair again. Clark removed his foot and Jason quickly began spinning again; when he looked over at Lois he caught her smirking at the pair of them.

"Tasha?" Clark mouthed; Lois only shrugged, apparently not knowing who the girl was, either.

- - -

"You were once afraid I would become a petty vigilante and forget the justice," Bruce was saying to Alfred when Clark began his descent on Wayne Manor. Clark hesitated on the doorstep, spinning back into his street clothes but not wanting to interrupt the conversation.

"You once _were_ a petty vigilante with justice far from your mind," Alfred reminded his employer, and Clark could see the half-smirk on the man's face even without x-ray vision. Bruce replied with a half-hearted snort and things fell to silence.

Clark's knock was answered by Alfred, who directed him to the kitchen before disappearing down one of the side halls.

"Evening, Clark," Bruce said, sitting back a bit on his stool. He had a small knife in his hand and was using it to cut apart an apple as he ate it.

"Evening," Clark replied even though it was two in the morning. He'd been flying within earshot of Gotham every so often through the night, waiting for Bruce to return to his manor.

"Alfred was just reminding me about the last time I investigated the GCPD."

"You were very… thorough."

"Yet, here we are, a few years later considering another purge."

"I came to give these back to you," Clark said after a pause, handing over the files he'd borrowed on his last visit. They were all dead ends, as they'd suspected when they'd pulled them. Technically, it was a serial kidnapping case the police only had open because so many aspects of new missing kids' cases had potential to link to the old ones. Leads had run dry, though, for the police, for journalists, even for the 'superheroes' involved.

"No luck?" Bruce asked, but he didn't sound surprised to be getting them back so soon—they both knew that if Clark had found anything, it would've been on the front page of the _Planet_.

"Nothing solid. A few of the kryptonite dealers in Metropolis rolled over and gave some names for sources in Gotham who we already knew about, if not suspected. A couple of the sources, with a bit of tracking on the part of the police and the proper bribes on the part of Lois and myself, let slip mention of this Boss character.

"There's a definite chain of command that links Metropolis to Gotham and back. The ones in Gotham who seem to have all the real kryptonite report to somebody in Metropolis, probably the guy that exported it from the harbor in the first place. But the kidnappings all point back to Gotham—kids taken in Metropolis and transported to Gotham, stashed somewhere with people connected to the kryptonite dealers, though, obviously, we haven't found precisely where, yet."

"What have you figured out about the experiments Lois heard about?" Bruce said, pushing the folders to the side; he already knew what they contained.

"Not a whole lot more. They're just rumors within certain crews involved with the real kryptonite trade."

"Rumors have to come from somewhere,"

"I almost don't want to know," Clark shuddered. He'd had the sinking feeling for months that all the kidnappings and the blossoming kryptonite, even false kryptonite, trade stemmed from the idea of the experiments. That somebody, this Boss character, was a scientist, or had the resources to hire scientists who could be controlled, whose criminal activities centered on a desire to examine the alien visitor to planet Earth.

And the visitor's son. A human-Kryptonian hybrid.

Clark shuddered again.

"What are you thinking?"

Clark voiced his thoughts, trying not to sound too paranoid.

"People don't become criminals overnight. Certainly not scientists, who have their research to keep them interested, and the paychecks they usually get with that research to keep them from considering crime."

"That's a connection to Gotham. The criminals here are resilient," Clark said, with a gesture that managed to remind Bruce of his plans to investigate the city's police force, again. "Even if the Boss isn't a scientist, himself, people here aren't foreigners to the idea of blackmail with threats carried out, and bribery is more common than anyplace else on the East coast."

"So it's likely your Luthor fled to Gotham after the Fiasco, plotting his revenge against you."

"He's motivated by revenge, but he's too calculating, too ruthless, for that to be more than the surface," Clark frowned at the folders on the table. "He's the only one besides you, myself and Lois that Jason is the son of Superman."

"Not that nobody else doesn't suspect," Bruce chuckled. Clark gave his friend a dark look—the tabloids had been hard on Lois when it had come out that she was pregnant. Clark suspected that, no matter what happened later in her career, things would always cycle back to her relationship with Superman.

"I should find another _press_ contact," he muttered, rubbing his hands across his face before resting his chin in his hands with his elbows propped on the table, looking at his friend. "A male one who cannot be accused of bearing my children."

"But, who knows?" Bruce asked, his smirk practically hitching up into a grin. "Maybe, you being an alien and all, that's the way it works for you."

Clark gave Bruce a blank look; "That's not funny."

"It's the funniest thing I've thought of all night."

"Not that that's saying anything," Clark sighed. Bruce just shrugged.

* * *

_A/N: Woo, two updates in a week! How about _them_ apples?? lol; sorry it's short, but it's an update, right? Next one should come about next Tuesday, and it looks like I should have another next Thursday as well :D_

_Thanks for reading!!! -mak :]_


	40. Chapter 40

The _Planet_'s holiday party, no matter what it was called, was one evening out of the year that Clark had always left his _other_ suit at home. It had started his first year at the _Planet_, when Lois had dumped her boyfriend the night before—or maybe he had dumped her, he'd never gotten the details, exactly—and called upon him as a stand-in date. It had been impossible to skip out, so he hadn't tried. For one night, he had just been Clark Kent, wearing a suit that actually fit, enjoying the company of his friend and coworkers, keeping Lois' mind off her breakup. After that, he'd made it a tradition, even though Lois had brought her boyfriend to the next year's celebration. It was four to five hours of normalcy at the longest, and he considered it his yearly therapy session.

This year, the holiday party had been beefed up on steroids to make it into the Anniversary Gala that had had the accountants on high-alert since before Clark had returned. Instead of holding the party in the bullpen, Perry had rented a ballroom at one of the ritziest hotels in the city; it was an event that would be mentioned in other papers the next morning, more than likely.

And this year, Clark was taking Lois not as a stand-in date, but as a real date. It was very surreal: he'd had a conversation with her about hiring a babysitter for Jason as they left work for the afternoon. He'd hailed her a cab, told her he'd pick her up at seven thirty, and seen her off before going to the nearest alley to spin into his other suit and making a few rounds of the globe.

Clark examined himself in the mirror, flattening hair and lapels, trying to remember the last time he'd worried about his appearance, really worried about it. Not worried about the appearance he was trying to present, which persona, but fidgeting with his tie because he wanted it just right when he next saw Lois, nevermind that he would be moving around, getting in and out of a cab, before he saw her, and it wouldn't matter how many times he'd tweaked it by then.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered to himself, leaving the tie be and putting on the long felt trench coat and his leather gloves, hesitating a moment before putting his old fedora on his head. For awhile, there hadn't been a day when he hadn't worn it to work. Lois had worn him down eventually, though, and he'd only worn in to the holiday party for nostalgia's sake.

_Everybody else will be expecting it, if not her_, he reminded himself.

It was bitterly cold outside with a biting wind blowing up bits of the snow piled on the curbs. The cabby barked at him to close the door quickly when he got out to knock, but Clark didn't blame him—even with his resilience against hot and cold and the elements in general, he could feel it gnawing at him.

Lois' apartment was in chaos when he arrived. Charlotte, Jason's usual sitter, had arrived, and her backpack, full of homework for her classes at Met. U., was on one end of the sofa next to Jason's empty backpack. Jason's things had somehow exploded throughout the living, across the coffee table and sofa, scattered on the floor. Homework and drawings mixing with yesterday's _Planet_, stray crayons, and partially unpacked boxes. Charlotte and Jason were sitting in the kitchen, the girl keeping him company while he ate dinner; Lois was nowhere to be seen, but Clark could hear her scrambling to put the final touches in place in the bathroom.

"Dad!" Jason said, leaping away from his macaroni and cheese to hug Clark around the knees.

"Hey, Jase," Clark said, hefting the boy up and giving him a squeeze. "What d'ya think of this?" he asked, holding up the dozen roses he'd brought for Lois, fresh from a shop nearly halfway around the world.

"They smell good," Jason said, wiggling out of his arms and jaunting off down the hall towards the bathroom. "Mom! Dad bought you flowers!"

"Clark!" Lois said, following Jason out of the bathroom. "Are you early?"

"No. Just about on time," Clark shrugged, glancing at the clock; it was just past seven thirty.

"These are beautiful," Lois said, eyes catching on the roses. Clark didn't respond, his eyes having caught on her. It was sage green with short, ruffled sleeves, a swooping v-neck that displayed just enough cleavage to tempt his x-ray vision for the rest. It clung in all the right places, with another v mirrored on her back, collar bones and shoulder blades an enticing display. The skirt went down to the floor, bunching into loose ruffles similar to the sleeves.

"If you stare at each other all night, you'll never get to your gala," Charlotte said from the kitchen, breaking the moment. Lois laughed nervously.

"I should put these in water before we go," she said, turning in a hurry to do just that, making the skirt swirl out around her feet. She wore strappy high heels that made her ankles look elegant.

"Are you okay, Dad?" Jason asked, looking up at him ever so innocently. Clark grinned.

"I'm just fine, thanks kiddo."

Lois and Clark bid Charlotte and Jason good-bye, Clark helping Lois on with her dress coat and trying not to grin like a high school kid on his first date when Lois let him hold her hand as they made their way down the stairs and out through the lobby.

"Charlotte seems like a good kid," Clark remarked for the sake of conversation as they walked. Lois smirked.

"Yeah, she is. She's been sitting Jason since he was three; they get along pretty well, which is a blessing."

"Oh?"

"Yeah; a few times when he and I went to the park, I heard some of the other moms sitting nearby exchanging babysitter-from-hell horror stories."

Clark nodded, not knowing what to say from there. Lois just continued smirking.

"You were really hoping to have a conversation about the babysitter with me?"

"I was just making an observation," he said in his own defense. Lois very nearly chuckled, squeezing his hand.

"I hear the mayor's going to be there tonight. And half the employees of City Hall, most of the senior police force, the high society hoity-toitys, administration from Met. General…"

"Basically everyone you've ever accused of being involved in a scandal, then," Clark couldn't help but laugh. Watching Lois mend fences in order to burn them again was always entertaining at the very least.

"I plan to spend a good portion of the evening avoiding confrontation by keeping my date on the dance floor."

"I don't dance, Lois," he said; it had been his policy since the beginning. He could dance just fine, his mother hadn't let him graduate from high school without teaching him a few basic ballroom steps and making sure he knew them well enough not to flatten Lana's feet at junior prom; however, dancing didn't fit the Clark Kent persona he maintained at work. As it was the one rare night of the year that he wore a suit that actually fit, dancing couldn't be risked.

"You _don't_ or you _can't_."

"I don't," he repeated warily, mistrusting the gleam in her eye.

-

True to her word, Lois kept Clark on the dance floor for a good portion of the evening, displaying a remarkable amount of tact by avoiding those guests that she had truly offended in her scandal-digging over the years. Luckily, the ballroom held too many people for another couple on the dance floor to gain much attention, even though more than half the _Planet_ staff had noticed Lois and Clark enter together seconds before they'd noticed that Clark actually looked much better than presentable.

Clark, for his part, was glad Lois had been too stubborn for her own good about the dancing. It was a damn good excuse to touch her, or even hold her close. Most of the songs were jazzy and light, good for dancing but also good as background music as Metropolis' who's-who mingled.

He only stepped on her feet when he heard conversations around them suggesting they were being watched and his lack of klutziness had been noted. As usual, a second's slip was all it took to throw the suspicious off his tracks, allowing him another song or so of just dancing with Lois. For her part, she seemed to enjoy it as well. When he held her close, she pressed into him comfortably, seeming to enjoy his touch, and when they weren't so close or he spun her, she was smiling broadly at him.

_We are besotted fools_, the thought drifted through Clark's mind as he spun her out again, her grin matching the one he knew was on his face. Lois laughed when his face quickly turned into a mask of surprise when Jimmy's camera flashed, catching their exchanged smiles.

"I'll get you prints!" Jimmy promised before disappearing back into the crowd, his camera flashing at another couple.

"Speaking of photos," Lois said, tugging at his hand to urge him off the dance floor, a bittersweet thing, "we should go look through those albums he's been putting together for months and months."

"Swell idea, Lois," Clark agreed a little too eagerly, earning himself a roll of her eyes, as well as those of Gil and a few of his sports writer buddies nearby who had been paying too much attention, in Clark's opinion.

There were more than a few photo albums, all Jimmy's handiwork, and he'd attacked the project with his usual enthusiasm; therefore, they'd turned out brilliantly. The first album was mostly in black-and-white, covering the construction of the current _Planet_ building, including a great wide-shot of the afternoon when the globe had been set in place by a gigantic crane. The photos made their way through the sixties and seventies within one album, full of vaguely recognizable faces of historical significance to the _Daily Planet_. Perry appeared, a spotty intern with a full head of hair and an eager look in his eyes rather similar to Jimmy's, with a few of the recently retired senior staff, as well as Artemis Kararsh, the editor at the _Star_, the _Planet_'s biggest competitor across town.

Most of the people from the photos from the eighties and nineties, those that were still alive, anyway, were in attendance, despite their retirement or transfer to other papers around the world. They were significantly grayer, but otherwise mostly the same.

By the fifth album, Lois's face was here and there in the corners of the pictures. She had been an intern in the beginning, not quite so eager-to-please looking as some, but present and pushy nonetheless. Then she disappeared for a year's worth of pictures, and then she was back permanently after the 1994 album. Clark's first pictures showed up in 1998, making him smile. He'd forgotten just how geeky he'd fashioned himself. In most of the pictures, he was imitating a fish, blinking at the camera or Lois, or looking lost when attempting to deal with his type writer. Lois was a constant fixture in his pictures, looking vaguely amused or annoyed, but usually striving to help him out.

There was an entire album, stuck between the '99 and 2000 albums, dedicated to Superman, which made Lois chuckle and Clark blush. Most of the photos in the album were those that Jimmy had taken but hadn't been published for one reason or another: Superman carrying lamed victims, helping somebody to their feet, standing and surveying a crime scene, soaring out of a burning building, talking to Lois just outside the crime-scene tape, always looking very formidable. It was a testament to Jimmy's photography skills, in Clark's opinion.

The photos pre-Niagara Falls versus those of Lois and Clark post-Niagara Falls were startling. Before, Lois and Clark had been attached at the hip, always together in the photos, always seeming to be discussing and moving in tandem. After, Lois seemed a bit adrift while Clark just seemed sad. He was present in a few of the photos in the 2002 album, but then he was gone. There were no pictures of the mess Lois had been, but Richard appeared, and a somehow less-driven Lois when she was photographed at all. It made Clark sad, flipping through the albums during his absence, striking him to the core to see just how much he'd missed.

Life in the bullpen had gone on with out him, he'd never suspected things would go differently, and yet it had changed. Lois, Mad Dog Lane, the spitfire, had calmed. He'd been told everybody had blamed that on her pregnancy and the natural maturation that came with motherhood, but, since he'd been back, Clark knew that she hadn't mellowed out for Jason's sake. She'd mellowed because she'd been drifting, just as he had been when he was away. The staff of the _Planet_ had fluctuated with the natural ebb and flow of news and reporting, Richard White had taken the place of Harry Highfield as the International section editor, portions of the senior staff had retired, the bullpen had had new TVs installed.

Jason began appearing around the bullpen in the 2004 album, and it was clear that his hanging around the bullpen was no new thing. It seemed that practically since birth, he'd been almost a sort of mascot. His 18 month old self was pictured being passed from writer to writer, sitting on laps in various cubicles while either of his parents were busy with other things. It was very cute, but it made Clark's heart hurt just a little more to see what he'd missed.

_Not another minute_, he promised himself.

The 2007 album, the latest and the one with the most pictures, was full of change. Clark had returned, Richard had left, there had been a few deaths, a few new hires, and Superman had returned to the headlines as well.

"Ah, nostalgia," Lois sighed, chuckling at a picture of she and Perry yelling at each other in his office. Clark couldn't help but laugh as well.

"I believe we're supposed to mingle now," Clark said, barely keeping himself from wrinkling his nose at the thought of meandering through the crowd and chatting up whomever they came across. Lois just rolled her eyes; she was a natural mingle-er.

Perry and Artemis Karash were discussing the business side of running a paper, online readership versus hard copy paper sales. Their wives stood off to one side, talking about loving men who were married to their papers. Lois and Clark said their hellos and were drawn into the conversation for awhile, before Perry and Alice were drawn away into a conversation with Cat Grant, the society pages' top writer, and a few of her hoity-toity contacts at the prospect of a significant donation. Karash spent a good fifteen minutes trying to, not entirely playfully, talk Lois into transferring to the _Star_, but Lois maintained the banter-feel of the conversation and excused herself and Clark quickly.

They spoke to the police representatives, a few of their own sources, and Clark left Lois with Jane Holm of channel 14 while he talked to Douglas Pendle, one of the big wigs from Metropolis General whose feathers Lois had ruffled too harshly for civil conversation even six years down the line.

Leaving Pendle to speak with his colleagues, Clark went looking from Lois, pausing when he saw her. She had escaped the conversation he'd half overheard—she'd been cornered by the Superman-crazy mayor and his wife and made to answer question after question about Superman—and was standing by the albums again, biting her thumb nail, an age-old nervous habit, and watching as Richard flipped through the albums. Clark took a closer look, seeing that her ex-fiancé was looking through the pictures before he'd joined the bullpen, when Lois and Clark had been inseparable, when there hadn't even been a thought that anything could come between them.

Unable to help himself, Clark stole away into the stairwell and focused his hearing, listening in on Lois and Richard's conversation.

"I can't believe you never mentioned him," Richard said. "It looks like you guys were closer than close."

"He left, I was mad," Lois said, and the simplicity of the statement would've been enough for Clark to know that she was leaving something out, but Richard didn't press her if he picked up on that as well.

The pair were silent a moment. Clark heard Lois's teeth against her nail and Richard's flipping through the albums.

"How's Berlin?"

"It's good. Berlin is good." Even Clark could hear the grin in the statement. "I forgot how much I like Europe."

"Good. I'm glad you're happy."

"Are _you_ happy?" Richard asked, his voice suddenly as serious as it had been earlier.

"Yes," Lois said without hesitating.

"I saw you and Clark dancing… Looks like you guys are back to the way you were."

"Even better," Lois mumbled, but Clark was fairly certain she'd said it too softly for Richard to hear. Another page turned.

"Can I see Jason?" Richard asked in a rush. "My plane doesn't leave 'til tomorrow morning, early. I'd like to see him before I go back… I promised he could call and write and things, but I haven't heard from him, and I wasn't sure if _I_ should call…"

"Things have been a bit hectic for us, is all," Lois said, her voice as tense as Richard's. "He hasn't had much time to think of anything but school and homework and piano lessons, let alone settling in our new apartment."

"You moved?"

"Yeah. It was—weird—at the Riverside house without you."

"Oh."

- - -

Lois knew her poor thumb nail would be next to nonexistent in the morning, but she didn't care. The Anniversary Gala had been a pleasant experience, altogether. Much more pleasant than she could've hoped, what with her usual reputation for such gatherings. Clark's presence had been a blessing, though. Keeping her grounded even as they drifted from conversation to conversation. They'd separated eventually, though, and that was when she'd come across Richard. He'd been looking through the albums, looking gobsmacked.

She'd never realized just how much she'd changed during the time when Clark had been gone until she'd looked at those pictures, seen herself with Jason and Richard and almost actually looked as though she were missing a vital portion of her personality. That vital piece of her had returned with Clark, and she could practically feel it.

She felt bad for Richard, though. She and Clark had spent the evening together, talking about old times with old friends, dancing, enjoying the buffet, meanwhile Richard had been on the peripheral, catching up with his aunt and uncle and colleagues, but seeming as though he felt out of place. She hadn't been able to turn him down when he'd asked to visit Jason, even though Jason would probably be asleep. Jason had missed Richard, though, she knew. He hadn't said as much and his life had been too busy to try and incorporate anything else, but it was there.

And so, Richard and Lois had shared a cab back to her new apartment after she'd given Clark a peck on the cheek as a goodbye. He'd promised to visit later, whispering in her ear. Richard had pretended not to notice how close they held one another.

Jason had been sleeping, as expected, when they'd arrived, so Charlotte had been deployed to bring him out of his bedroom—she would've sent Richard in there to wake the boy himself, but then she'd remembered the stars on the ceiling and the pictures on the bulletin board and the volcano science project Clark had helped him with the past weekend and hadn't wanted him to see, not wanting to hurt him.

"Lois!" Charlotte called from the bedroom, panic in her voice. "Lois! Miss Lane! Lois!"

"What? What is it?" Lois asked, hurrying into Jason's room, Richard right behind her. "Charlotte?"

"Lois!" Charlotte said again, turning to look helplessly at the little boy she'd been nannying since he was three. She was a college student, a history major at Met. U. who needed the extra cash and did a good job, a senior Lois had met when Charlotte had been on a tour of the _Planet_ bullpen with a class. "I don't know what happened! I don't think he's breathing!"

Richard rushed forward, shoving Lois out of his way in his hurry. If she didn't know that he had a better handle on CPR than she did, she would've been angry; instead she just hovered near his shoulder to watch while Richard checked for breath and looked for what could've caused the problem.

"Oh my God, oh my God," Charlotte repeated, standing to one side and watching.

"Why is this happening? What's making this happen?" Lois asked, her inner reporter shining through everything as questions continued to pour out of her mouth.

"Shut _up_, Lois," Richard ordered, beginning to breathe for Jason, plugging his nose and blowing air into his lungs. He jumped back when Jason suddenly sat up, gasping for breath. His eyes were wide and panicked; Clark's eyes like she had never seen them.

"Jason?" Lois asked, his panicked eyes flew to hers, pleading for her help. He couldn't speak, gasping for breath like a fish out of water. His eyes rolled back into his head, passing out again. "JASON!"

"Oh my God, oh my God," Charlotte said, eyes darting from face to face. It didn't look like Jason was breathing.

"He's breathing for himself, but barely," Richard said softly, hand hovering over Jason's face to feel the breath. "I don't know what to do…" He looked at Lois, panicked.

Lois pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and punched in the number she'd called a thousand times since he'd been back. It rang twice before Clark's familiar voice answered.

"Lois?"

"Help," Lois said, barely breathing herself. The phone was suddenly full of static, the rush of wind.

"What happened?" Superman's deep voice asked from the open window and Lois's cell phone. He was in gray knit lounge pants and a white t-shirt with black socks—Lois would've laughed to think that she'd called him in the process of changing out of his tuxedo, but it didn't strike her as funny in that moment—his phone pressed to his ear, his glasses no where in sight, the Kenny curl on his forehead.

"He wasn't breathing, then he passed out—but he's breathing now…!" Lois said quickly, her heart racing. She could feel her throat plugging up as though she was about to cry and she swallowed a few times. "I don't know, I don't know!"

"Oh my God," Charlotte continued to say, her eyes now darting between Lois and Superman.

Clark gave his son a critical look, x-raying him, looking into his lungs as he pocketed his cell phone. He didn't see anything off he'd ever seen before, but there was a greenish tinge to his lungs that certainly shouldn't be there. Without waiting another second, he pocketed his phone and scooped Jason up into his arms before taking off out the window.

Lois sat down on Jason's bed, pressing her phone to her forehead and breathing. There were silent tears running down her cheeks. Richard paced for a few moments, stopping to stare at Lois before leaving the room.

"Lois…?" Charlotte asked, taking a step toward the bed Lois was sitting on.

"Charlotte—are you alright?" Lois asked, looking up at her and wiping the tears off her cheeks.

"Yes, I'm fine… are you?"

"I'll be alright," Lois said dismissively, glancing at the window, unable to see even a dark speck in the sky that could be her son and his father.

"I'm sure he's going to be fine. Superman's got him, after all," she gave a winning smile. Lois looked up at her, her eyes lacking the utter confidence she'd been expecting.

"He's just a man, Charlotte," Lois sighed. "He can fly and shoot fire from his eyes, but… he's just a man."


	41. Chapter 41

"Mr. Luthor?"

"What happened?" Luthor growled.

"He disappeared."

"I hope, for your sake, that you mean that in a 'I made him disappear' sort of way."

"No, sir. I mean the kid just disappeared. One minute, it looks like he's going comatose just like the doc' said he would, the next the babysitter's blocking my view and by the time it all clears out the kid isn't in the house anymore."

"Goodbye, Mr. Johnson."

- - -

"He has a cell phone now?" Richard asked, only sounding slightly surprised.

"Yeah," Lois said, trying and failing utterly to smile. "It's easier to contact him that way. Chief Henderson has the number, too."

"How does he pay the bill?"

"Who knows? He's from a different planet," Lois shrugged. She didn't want to have this conversation with Richard at the moment. All she could think about was Jason, not breathing, just like right after he was born. That had been pure hell, she'd never felt so helpless in her life, including all the times she'd fallen off of high things with no way to check her fall.

Lucky Superman was always around.

But this was Jason. Superman's son. The only thing that could hurt Superman, could hurt Clark, was kryptonite, and, by extension, the only thing that could hurt Jason, really hurt him, was kryptonite, which begged the question: where was the kryptonite?

Lois wanted to turn the room inside out, but she couldn't do it with Richard and Charlotte watching her so closely. Charlotte was still looking at the window, awed, and Richard looked utterly miserable, absolutely forlorn and worried out of his mind. Besides, Clark would be able to _feel_ if kryptonite was present and locate it faster than she ever could; she would only be wasting her time.

Taking deep breaths, Lois dug Charlotte's usual fee and then some out of her purse and handed it to the college student, thanking her and promising to call when they found out which hospital Superman had taken Jason to. Reluctantly, Charlotte allowed herself to be seen out.

Richard sat on Jason's bed, fists clenched, eyes trained on the window. Lois paced the room for awhile, then went into her bedroom and took off her gown and jewelry, kicking off her shoes and leaving the lot of it haphazard on the bed. She pulled on her sweats hurriedly, and a thick pair of socks, though she didn't find the usual comfort in them.

Clark had him, he'd know what to do; Jason would be fine.

_So why doesn't he at least call?_

After pacing some more, she joined Richard sitting on Jason's bed and staring out the window while she waited. She hated waiting.

They'd returned to the apartment close to one o'clock, but it was passing four before Richard finally left, having to return to his hotel to pack his things and shower before his plane left; no matter how much he wanted to, staying wasn't an option—he had an important interview with the U.S. ambassador to Germany in Berlin he couldn't miss (he'd already been in Metropolis for half a week, visiting with family and whatnot). Lois promised she'd have Jason call him, and see if she couldn't, maybe, talk Superman into giving them a lift across the ocean for a lunchtime visit, if at all possible. Making plans like that didn't bring any more confidence in the case of this latest medical upheaval, but they could pretend it did.

Lois fell asleep on Jason's bed, curled up with his pillow in her arms, near seven, though it wasn't a very restful sort of sleep. Near ten, Clark gently shook her awake.

"Where's Jason? Is he okay? What happened? Why didn't you call?"

"Jason will be fine," Clark assured her in his deep, reassuring Superman voice, the one that held so much confidence that it was possible to ignore the fact that he looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes, and just believe him.

"Why didn't you call?"

"I was out of cell range, I'm sorry."

"Where did you take him?"

"The Fortress."

"The Fortress? What was wrong with him? Did you leave him there, _alone_?"

"C'mon," he said, not answering her questions and making her want to stamp a foot and glare at him for it. "We should get back. Where's Richard?"

"He had to catch a plane."

"Oh."

Clark held her close as they flew; that tingling, not quite numb sensation she'd felt once before, when he'd been kissing her so thoroughly, itched across her skin, but she hardly noticed. His naturally high body heat kept her warm as they soared through the sky above the clouds, the beautiful play of the sunshine so unfiltered that it was almost too bright hardly registering.

The Fortress was just as alien-looking as she remembered it. There were the huge hexagonal pillars that rose out of the ground at seemingly random angles, forming the walls and ceiling, and the sort of dais and platform that served as the pain control panel for the place. Clark flew her to a wing that she didn't remember from her previous trips to the Fortress, though. It seemed to be a medical wing of sorts, with gurney-looking crystalline platforms, panels of lights in the walls, and the sort of sci-fi, futuristic medicine-looking gadgets that could only be a Kryptonian infirmary.

"Jason," she murmured when she saw him, lying down on one of the gurneys, the only one that looked as though it had been activated. He looked peaceful, like he was simply asleep, even as his pajamas floated around him as though he was immersed in water, though he certainly wasn't. He was ensconced in rippling yellow light that varied up to white and back to yellow in its intensity. On the side of the gurney, a blue light seemed to be keeping time with his sleeping heart rate, a green light monitoring his breathing. "Is he alright?"

"He'll be fine in a couple of hours. He's asleep right now, while the machine does its work."

"What was wrong with him? What's the machine doing?"

"I don't know how it happened, but it looks like he inhaled some sort of kryptonite dust," Clark said, shuddering. "I can only imagine that he must've inhaled it over a period of time, or the pain of it would've alerted him that something was wrong long before he stopped breathing in his sleep."

"Thank God Charlotte went in to wake him when she did," Lois said, shuddering at the thought of what a few more minutes could've done to her little boy. Clark pulled her close again, holding her as they both looked down at Jason lying on the machine as Clark continued to explain.

"It was in all his air sacs and clinging to all his lung and bronchial tissues all the way up to his throat—it's not in his nasal passages, though, which is odd."

"His inhaler," Lois said immediately. "The dust could've been in his inhaler."

"But how? We're the only ones with his inhaler, and I would've noticed if even a tiny amount was snuck into them."

"What about the ones he has at school, with the nurse and the recess monitor?"

"Somebody could've tampered with them…"

"Fuck."

"Yeah," Clark shuddered, holding her a little closer. Her skin tingled again, this time not so much as itch as a tickle, prickling across her skin. "The light therapy will cleanse his body of outside agents; it will also, more than likely, move the development of his abilities forward. This machine simulated the rays of the yellow sun, tweaked with a few special Kryptonian-developed frequencies."

"Poor Jason," Lois shuddered, resting her head against Clark's shoulder, burying her face in his pajama shirt. "He's having such a hard year." Clark rested his chin on top of her head, one of his hands rubbing along her back comfortingly.

"Life shouldn't be this hard," he agreed, then sighed. "I called his school while I was en route to get you, letting them know he wouldn't be in for a few days, and I called Perry to let him know that Jason had a bad attack and we probably wouldn't be in today."

"What did he say to that?" Lois couldn't help but chuckle, knowing herself and knowing Perry, he would probably assume that they were too hungover to work.

"He talked to Richard, I guess. He said to take all the time we need."

"Good," she sighed, wrapping her arms around Clark and clinging to him. A thought occurred to her; "Did you check yourself for any inhaled kryptonite? If somebody put it in Jason's inhaler, somebody could be sending it airborne other places he, or you, frequent…"

Clark disengaged from her and she immediately felt bereft. Not only did his warmth leave, and it was on the chilly side despite the climate control, but that tingling that had been more pleasant the longer it had thrummed across her skin faded as well. He walked over to the next gurney over and pressed a few glowing buttons before lying down on it. After a moment, a clear, glass-like dome rotated out of the gurney so that it was over him, then white-blue light scanned him head to foot before flashing in various specific places across his abdomen. When the lights finished, a light on the side of the gurney flashed white once and the dome rotated back out of sight.

Clark got off the gurney and took her had, leading her over to the wall where a touch brought a display into view. It looked like an x-ray, only bones weren't the only things to show up. There were many repetitions of the same image, each slide showing a different layer of him: bones, muscles, soft tissues, cartilage, organs. There were close-ups of the organs in his torso, which he touched, making the images larger and removing the full-body images.

"Not a hint of kryptonite," Clark said, sounding relieved but not surprised. "So only Jason was exposed to the inhale-able stuff."

"Who would do this?" she asked, even though she knew the answer. Clark knew she knew, too, and didn't answer.

"I just want to know how he had access, who he used."

"We'll have to talk to his teacher, the principal, check the nurse and Mr. Chen and see if anybody besides them could've gotten a hold of the inhalers."

"What if it was the nurse or Chen?"

"I hope not," Lois couldn't help but hold his hand a little tighter, and he wrapped his arms around her again as they walked over to stand by Jason. "He really seemed to like Mr. Chen, and I've met the nurse a few times before, she seemed alright to me."

"I hate this," Clark said vehemently.

"I do too."

"I'm sorry," Clark said, pulling her closer again so that he could rest his chin on her head.

"This isn't your fault."

"I meant for not being here, before. I don't know how you could've gone through this, after he was born, when he was even smaller and more helpless, and he had so many problems…"

She held onto him a little tighter, not sure what there was to say. She was sorry he hadn't been there, too. She'd missed him most, then. She and Richard still hadn't known each other very well, though they weren't strangers anymore either. Her family had been overwhelmingly supportive, as had Perry and Jimmy and all her colleagues, and yet none of that had helped to make Jason any better. As far as anybody had known, he'd been a few weeks early, but he was so frail. His little lungs had barely been able to breathe for him; he'd been whisked off into in incubator almost immediately and kept there the first night of his life outside the womb.

It had been terrifying.

She'd wanted Clark, her rock, to be there to hold her hand, who would know what to say to comfort her. Not her family, who were oppressive with their hope and their hugs, nor Richard, who was good for holding her hand, but was a nervous wreck, both because of Jason's condition and because the General had been breathing down his neck the whole time, and that didn't help her any. Clark wouldn't have crowded her, but he would've supported her and distracted her and reassured her, as he did now. Now, he held her and was quiet; they were just _there_ together, worrying together, knowing nothing either of them could say would make it any better.

"I hate this, too," she whispered.

After what seemed like days but was only a few hours, the pulsing light stopped and the underwater effect on Jason's clothes settled. The gurney beneath him glowed green and hummed for a minute, and then it powered down. Jason slept on, but Clark seemed to relax around her, reaching out and pressing the same combination of glowing buttons that he had before lying down on the other gurney. The same glass dome rotated into place, the same white-blue light show flashed, and then she followed him over to the wall again to look at the images from the scan. They looked the same, if smaller, as Clark's from before. Again, he seemed to relax beside her.

"Not a trace of kryptonite left in him."

"Thank God."

Clark scrubbed tiredly at his eyes before walking over and picking his sleeping son up off the gurney, moving slowly so as not to wake him. Jason sighed and snuggled into Clark's shoulder, his breath even and deep. Lois wanted to cry from relief, but instead she just followed Clark as he carried Jason out of the infirmary section of the Fortress toward one that was more familiar. He passed the huge bedroom chamber in which Jason had been conceived and went through the next door down. It was another bedroom, only smaller, with a smaller bed with the same silver sheets. Clark put Jason on the bed and tucked him in, kissing him on the forehead before stepping back and turning to face Lois, looking even more exhausted than she felt.

"So he's fine now?" she had to ask, looking down at Jason, sleeping, completely oblivious. "He'll be okay?"

"All the scans say he's fine, but I'm sure he's even more exhausted than we are. "Light therapy is… tiring."

"You've done it before?"

"Twice, yes. Once before there was any sort of Superman, when I almost literally stumbled upon a mess of kryptonite when I was journeying through Africa, the other time shortly before I left in preparation for space travel."

"Oh."

They stood beside the bed for awhile, watching Jason sleep. His breathing was even, his face peaceful. Lois had the urge to wake him, but it sounded like he would desperately need the rest after the light therapy…

"Let's go to sleep, Lois," Clark murmured, pulling her close again; she'd begun to weave slightly as she stood beside him. "Jason will sleep for another eight hours at least, and the security systems will let us know the moment he wakes up.'

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

She kissed Jason goodnight and Clark put an arm around her shoulders, guiding her back into the other, larger bedroom.

"When I disabled the A.I.," he explained, "I ran through all the Fortress' protocols and programs, making sure I hadn't disabled anything else and enhancing security."

"I would've thought security would've been tight enough that the likes of _Luthor_ couldn't get in," Lois growled, more angry that Luthor had had the audacity to try than anything else. She set her sweatshirt aside and crawled between the familiar silvery sheets, enjoying the smoother-than-silk feel of them as they whispered across her skin.

"I assumed it was," Clark said darkly, joining her in bed. She cuddled into the crook of his arm, pressing her ear against his chest to listen to the rumble of his voice as he kept speaking. "Now it definitely is. The gap in the ceiling is the only entryway left barring attack of Kryptonian warheads, which don't exist anymore. Security is tight to the point of redundancy, and everything is routed through a log that I can go back and check after the fact to find out what happened, exactly. When Luthor took the crystals, there was no log; there was no way to tell who took them or a way to track them or anything."

"There's a way to track them, now?"

"Yes. And duplicating them would be easier if I needed to. And the father crystal is even safer, locked in the vault."

"There's a vault?"

"I'll give you both a tour in the morning. I don't think you even saw the whole lot of it last time you were here."

"We were a little busy," she couldn't help but smirk. Clark just chuckled, kissing her before settling into a comfortable position and holding her close as they both drifted off to sleep.

* * *

_A/N: Wow, I ought to do cliff-hangers more often! That was quite a response, guys; thanks!! We have now officially reached the last planks of that annoying bridge I had to build between the beginning pre-written and the middle/end pre-written chapters I had; expect fairly regular updates from here (probably every Tuesday and Thursday, if things keep going the way I hope they will)! Thanks for hanging in here with me, I hope you're all still enjoying it._

_Just to address one thing I got in the reviews that I felt was a valid point: it was just sort of assumed that since Charlotte and Richard saw Kal-El in sweats, they'd automatically make the leap to Clark being Superman; for the sake of the plot, they are too thick for that. Based off of it taking Lois so long to actually pin him down in the movies, Charlotte and Richard are going to remain more-or-less clueless for the time being. Richard still thinks Jason is actually Clark's, having not witnessed just what got Lois and Jason locked in the pantry on the _Gertrude_ in the first place, but having seen Lois and Clark interact at the farm and whatnot. And Charlotte was panicking too much to put Clark's face and Superman's face together, especially with the former wearing the defining glasses and the latter with the defining curl. So his identity is still secure on their parts at the moment._

_And you should all go read Shattered Illusions by KLynneL because I'm beta-ing it... and because it's a good story ;)_


	42. Chapter 42

Perry glared out at the bullpen. The desks of his top City reporters were empty, but they had a rather good excuse. Poor little Jason, always so fragile. It had been one thing after another in his life for so long, it just wasn't right; he was a good kid, he deserved a stretch of normalcy. Instead, he got the first few years of his life in and out of the emergency room, a terrifying amount of pills and supplements to swallow every day, then he was kidnapped by a madman, his parents split up, he was introduced to a new daddy, and then the latest hospitalization.

It wasn't Jason's strife that had had Perry sitting at his desk all morning without doing any work, looking out at the bullpen and contemplating.

Richard had called just before eight, letting him know what had happened at Lois' and giving him his flight information before he left the country, but then Clark had called just shy of two hours later claiming that Jason had been taken to a hospital, not flown away by Superman. And it was impossible for his paranoid reporter's mind to ignore the fact that the call from Clark had been tainted by what could only be the sound of air moving quickly past the mouthpiece every few seconds, as though he were either standing at a very windy corner, or moving quickly through the air by some other means.

That alone wouldn't have been convincing enough for Perry, though. He'd started as a fact-checker, after all, and he'd always been thorough.

Fact was, though, that Superman was off the radar and had been since before the Anniversary Gala had begun. Clark hadn't once left the Gala until he and Lois and Richard had headed out to catch their cabs. There had been news in the morning of a devastating storm on the coast of Australia in the pre-dawn hours Metropolis time. Natural disasters were never overlooked by Superman, and yet there had been no sign of him yet. There had also been two muggings in Metropolis during the Gala, and there were whispers of another child's body found related to the Napper Neighborhood kidnappings. No Superman.

Hell, police had found a body in an alley less than a block from Lois' new apartment. No Superman.

Was it possible Superman hadn't stopped the muggings because he'd been wearing a tuxedo and dancing with Lois Lane at the Gala? Was it possible Superman hadn't needed to call in sick that morning because he'd been in Australia lending aid in recovery because he'd called in sick on account of a family emergency after going off someplace secret in the middle of the night when his girlfriend's son was very ill? Was it possible Superman hadn't discovered the body of the child himself because he'd been tending to another child? Was it possible he hadn't stepped in when the man had been killed near Lois' apartment because he had been rushing Jason to a hospital?

Was it possible that other child, that girlfriend's son, was actually his own son? Was it possible Clark Kent was really the father, as Lois claimed, as Richard believed, meaning that Superman was Jason's father?

Was it possible that every bit of the evidence was entirely circumstantial?

Was there a way to prove it?

Would he publish it if it were?

- - -

Clark woke first, which wasn't a surprise. Even in the Fortress, the rays of the yellow sun seemed to call to him, urge him awake so that he could fly out and revel in their warmth and energizing brightness.

_Waxing poetic and you've only been awake for a minute_, Clark thought to himself, debating the pros and cons of getting out of bed for a quick flight in the sunshine. It was _so nice_ next to Lois, with her wrapped in his arms…

The sunshine drove the last vestiges of sleepiness from his brain, recharging him in a way that sleeping and eating could not. He didn't want to stay away long, though. Lois and Jason were nearing wakefulness and he didn't want to be away from them any longer than he had to be.

Lois had just made her way out of the bedroom when he dropped through the entrance in the ceiling. She smiled at him, walking to his side and wrapping her arms around him.

"Good morning," she sighed, seeming like she was trying to melt into him.

"Good morning," he agreed, almost laughing at the surreality of the moment: they were in the Fortress, she knew everything, their son was in the second bedroom, and she wasn't furious with him.

"How's Jason?"

"Still sleeping, but he's fine. I checked on him before I went flying."

"Good."

She stepped back to look around them, eyes roving along the tall crystalline pillars and the crazy amalgamation of angles that made up doorways and ceilings. It was a very alien structure, he readily admitted, but it wasn't altogether unfamiliar, or foreboding as it probably could've been.

"Is there food here? I'm starved."

"Yes; it's very sci-fi food, too. There's a synthesizer and everything."

"Really?" she looked caught halfway between disbelief and the urge to laugh. Once he'd gotten them both something that resembled a blueberry muffin in taste but had the texture and juiciness of an apple (which was rather disconcerting on first bite) and didn't have a name in English, they made their way towards the smaller bedroom.

"Is he up yet?"

"It sounds like he might be stirring…"

"Let's bring him a nameless food item."

Jason was sitting up and blinking when they entered the room, and grinned broadly at them when they entered.

"Hi!"

"Morning, Jason. How do you feel?" Clark asked, looking him over for any signs of weariness or unease, which could be the only things wrong with him after such a thorough and successful treatment the night before. Jason just smiled, taking an easy deep breath.

"Great!"

Relief flooded through Clark.

"Good," Lois beamed, holding out the wannabe muffin. "We brought you breakfast."

"What is it?"

"It's kind of like a muffin," Clark said, ignoring Lois as she rolled her eyes at him.

"This is really good!" Jason exclaimed after he'd had a few bites. "What's it called?"

"Your dad won't say," Lois said, sitting on the edge of his bed and making a superior sort of face. "We Earthlings couldn't pronounce it."

"Technically," Clark said, raising an eyebrow at her, "Jason is Kryptonian."

"Cool," Jason said, having another bite of the wannabe muffin while Lois mock-glared. "Does it have a Kryptonian name?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"It's called ábbæñō."

"That is _not_ that difficult to say," Lois protested, but Jason just smiled.

"Ábbæñō."

"Good job," Clark couldn't help but smile; as far as he could tell, the word had rolled as naturally off Jason's tongue as it had his own.

"Abbañō," Lois said.

"No, Mom: ábbæñō."

"That's what I said."

"Nuh-uh."

"It's ábbæñō not abbañō," Clark said, emphasizing the subtle difference at the beginning.

"Abbæñō"

"Closer," Jason said, finishing his ábbæñō and licking his fingers as his mother had.

"And suddenly _you're_ the expert?" Lois accused, smiling at him. Jason merely grinned before turning to Clark with a curious look on his face.

"Do _I _have a Kryptonian name, Dad?"

"No, why would you?"

"You said I was Kryptonian."

"Yes, but you live here on Earth."

"So do you, but _you_ have a Kryptonian name: Kal-El. Mom told me so."

"Yes, that's my name from Krypton, but nobody uses it here…"

"_Can_ I have a Kryptonian name?" Jason asked, sitting up straighter in bed, looking excited.

"And what did you have in mind?" Lois asked, chuckling. "Abbæñō?"

"That'd be like naming me Apple," Jason said, wrinkling his nose. "Only weird famous people name their kids Apple."

"Hey, I'm a crazy famous person," Lois said in her defense. Clark chuckled, joining them in sitting on the bed.

"Even crazy famous people on Krypton didn't name their kids after food."

"Good," Jason said, sounding quite relieved, making Clark smile a little broader. "What _did_ they name their kids, then?"

"Most names were family names—Kal-El, Jor-El, Reg-El. I'm fairly sure those are the three most common names along my father's line," Clark shrugged. "Here, follow me; I'll show you."

They went into the main chamber, Jason wide-eyed and amazed like Lois had never been. They were both examining things with their eyes, seeming to try to memorize it at first glance. Clark could only smirk; he'd had a similar reaction the first time, and the sight of the place never failed to bring something a lot like pride to his chest, even if the over-use of similar crystalline means of construction had eventually killed Krypton, among other things, it sure looked neat.

Clark activated the main console and brought up a diagram of the history of the House of El, the family tree. The symbol for El, what was known as Superman's 'S' shield on Earth, was at the top, large and gold and slightly luminous. Lois gave a little snort at the sight of it that Clark ignored. Stemming down from the house symbol was the genealogy tracing back several centuries of Kryptonian life, from Clark at the very top as the last descendent of the House of El, to Sal-El, his great-great-great-great-great-_really _great- great grandfather.

"All these characters represent names; see how so many of them repeat?" he asked, pointing to the pair of symbols that stood for his own name and the seven times they repeated across the tree. There were a dozen Jor-Els and at least half of Clark's male great-cousins were named Reg-El.

"Do Kryptonian names have meanings, like most of ours here do?" Lois asked, eyes roving over the symbols she couldn't interpret.

"Most of them do to some extent, like here; but, also like here, the meanings behind the names don't always matter so much."

"What does Kal-El mean?" Jason asked without taking his eyes off the display.

"A kal was a very large bird on Krypton, kind of like a phoenix or something so far as folklore went, but very real. And el means hope."

"Phoenix Hope," Lois said, shaking her head. "You sound like your parents were hippies."

"So far as I know, my birth parents _were_ the equivalent of hippies on Krypton," Lois snorted. Jason seemed mostly oblivious, now focused on a particular name that didn't appear so often as some of the others on the family tree.

"What's this one?" Jason asked, pointing to the name; the character was simple, the symbol for El was circled by a thin line and there was a short horizontal line extending either way from it.

"Dor-El," Clark said. "Dor means light."

"Light like sunlight or light like not heavy?"

"Light like good instead of evil."

"I like it," Jason said, turning to look up at Clark. "Can it be my name?"

Clark blinked at his son before smiling. "Sure. Let's put you on this list, shall we?"

"Yeah!"

Clark manipulated the Kryptonian version of a cursor into place and inserted the correct combination of symbols for Dor-El with a line tracing back to Kal-El. Automatically, the computer sprouted another dash and waited for him to insert a mother's name.

"It wants your mom's name too," he told Jason, which only made the boy beam brighter.

"What do you want your Kryptonian name to be, Mom?"

Lois blinked and shrugged. "What's a good one?"

"Lara, Kara, Rora, Jema, Ada, Ali, Jo, Ruo, Riah, Beni…" Clark listed off, reading the names of the sisters and wives down the El family tree.

"I like Ada," Jason said.

"What does ada mean?"

"Life."

"How cheesy."

Clark just laughed, "Your father needs a name, too. Female names end in their father's name, thus Lara Lor-Van."

"Sam Lane wouldn't happen to translate into Kryptonian, would it?" Lois said, wrinkling her nose. Jason smiled, looking expectantly up at Clark, who was having to do more thinking in Kryptonian than he had since he'd disabled the A.I.

"'An' is the military rank of general, and the middle two letters of your last name," Clark said, trying to think of something fitting, eyes skimming the genealogy. "'Sam' translates to elbow…"

"Elbow General!" Jason cried, giggling madly.

"Sounds good to me," Lois said, smiling. Clark hoped she hadn't gotten into another fight with her father that he had yet to hear about, but he added Ada Sam-An into the waiting space. When he looked over, Lois was still smiling, but she looked as though she'd achieved something, like she had a toothbrush in his bathroom or something. He couldn't help but smile at that, putting an arm around her waist.

"Can I learn Kryptonian?" Jason asked, still looking at all of the unfamiliar characters, almost the same way he looked at the words in the easy reader books he'd begun to read every night before bed.

"Sure," Clark said, feeling himself smiling again. He'd been planning on bringing it up himself, but now there was no need. "Actually, that would be a really good idea. If your mom's okay with it," he gave Lois a squeeze, "I was thinking you could use a handheld hologram projector to learn about Krypton sometime in the future, but the projectors only work in Kryptonian, so you'd have to learn to language first."

Beside him, Lois groaned as Jason began to jump up and down a bit in his excitement.

"What?" Clark asked.

"Now _I_ have to learn Kryptonian," she said, letting her head thud against his shoulder. "And I'm not good with languages."

"We can learn together!" Jason exclaimed, running off in the direction of the room he'd slept in, quite fast, then coming back to them when he realized he didn't have anything to do in there. "What are we doing now?"

"Well," Clark said, looking around them. "We were talking about a tour; you guys can look around a bit. Then I want to get you checked over one more time before we go back home and get some real food."

"That wasn't fake food," Jason protested. "I _liked_ it."

"You know what he means, Jason," Lois sighed. Jason grinned and began exploring, mostly tuning out the monologue that Clark picked up, telling them a little bit about the Fortress.

* * *

"And that is the Fortress," Clark said with a shrug when they'd made their way through the rooms. He was rather proud of the space, especially now that he'd made it his own instead of letting it be dominated by the A.I.

"Let's go home," Lois suggested, looking ready for a full meal and a shower, which was the way Clark felt. Despite the few hours they'd slept, neither felt very rested, having spent most of the supposed rest battling their subconscious urging them to get up and check on their son, who gave every appearance of better-than-normal health upon his waking, which was more than a relief.

"Yeah!" Jason said, long bored of walking from room to room without being allowed to touch anything interesting. He promptly leapt off the floor and soared up toward the ceiling, getting halfway there before realizing what had happened and abruptly falling back towards the ground.

Clark only barely managed to catch Lois as she fainted dead away; Jason caught himself, hovering a few yards off the ground much as Clark remembered doing, himself, on his first flight.

"You okay, Jase?"

"I think so," the boy whispered. Clark could only smile.

* * *

_A/N: So I don't particularly like this chapter… the fluffiness is not where my mind is at with this story at the moment, but yeah. Expect an update Thursday shortly before noon :)_


	43. Chapter 43

Lois walked into Tracy's Diner and looked around at the familiar faces, searching out the most familiar of all of them, finding him in the usual booth.

"Chief," Lois said, sliding into the booth across from him.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," Henderson said, relaxing back into the booth. "The city's going crazy today, and no Lois Lane at any crime scenes. No Superman, either."

"I need to talk to you."

"What's up, Miss Lane?"

"Not here. It's… personal."

Henderson raised an eyebrow, but followed her out of the diner without further ado. "What's going on, Lois?" he asked when they reached her car, parked on a side street around the corner.

"Somebody tried to kill Jason."

"What?" Henderson was suddenly alert, throwing off whatever small amount of alcohol he'd gotten down before she'd arrived and the relaxation that had come with it.

"The reason Clark and I haven't been at any crime scenes today is because we've been at his fortress in the north all day. As far as we can tell, somebody got kryptonite dust in one of his inhalers; it was in his throat and the deepest parts of his lungs."

"Is he okay?"

"He's fine. He's better than fine—the light treatment cleared out the kryptonite and went further, pushing all his _super_ tendencies to the front. He and Clark are in Kansas. He can suddenly fly and fire comes out of his eyes if he squints just right; he's overwhelmed," Lois said, massaging her temples with her fingertips.

"Who tried to kill him?" Henderson asked after a moment.

"That's why I'm here and not in Kansas. I gathered all his inhalers around the house and in the bullpen; I got the two kept at his school," she pulled a huge Ziploc bag out from beneath her seat filled with smaller baggies, each containing an inhaler and labeled with the place she'd found it. "I don't have a way to analyze the inhalers, and you're the only one outside the family who knows Jason is Clark's—or at least what it means, exactly, that Jason is like his father."

"I'm not going to ask you how you got the inhalers from his school," Henderson said, taking the bag and looking at the inhalers within.

It was a short drive to the precinct, and quiet. Lois' grip on the wheel had her knuckles white, and Henderson's knuckles were white holding onto the door handle, also not commenting on her driving.

"Do you know a Mitchell Johnson?" he asked as she slowed to turn into the precinct.

"Never heard of him. Should I have?"

"His body was found less than a block from your apartment yesterday morning."

"_What_?"

"He was executed; he had a gun scope and zip ties, among other things, on him when he died."

"He was watching us?"

"It's likely."

Lois hurried along after him as he strode through halls familiar to him. She wasn't sure where they were headed as she'd never been allowed anywhere but his office and the rooms his detectives used to question suspects. They took an elevator down a floor and she recognized a lab setting. There were a few forensic scientists around burning the midnight oil.

"I went to high school with Phil Rice; we didn't hang out much, he was a few years ahead of me, but we came through the ranks in parallel. I trust him, he's a good guy."

"If you trust him, I trust him," she said with only the slightest hesitation. Henderson nodded and led her around a last corner to a small office with a glass door. Dr. Rice had a full head of gray hair, sharp, dark eyes, and square reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. He was reading through one of what looked like well over a dozen case files, a lab coat over the back of his chair.

"Got a minute, Phil?"

"Sure, Chief," Dr. Rice said, looking up at the pair of them. His eyebrows rose when he saw Lois, and higher when Henderson closed the door behind the pair of them, but he closed his case file and looked ready to listen.

- - -

"Only one of the inhalers was tainted with kryptonite dust; Mr. Chen's, the recess monitor," Lois said when Clark landed on the roof of the _Daily Planet_ building. The pre-dawn glow on the horizon cast them both in fey relief, making everything slightly ethereal. While Clark had been trying to help Jason muscle through the outrageous and sudden changes in the way physics related to him, Lois had been drilling Henderson and Dr. Rice on the events they had missed while they were away from Metropolis. "Henderson really seems to trust this Dr. Rice guy, and he seemed okay to me, if a little shell-shocked, but that was probably a good thing."

"Probably," Clark agreed, every line of his body tense as he listened to her.

"Anyway, Henderson looked into Chen, got his address and employment history and all that. There's not a traffic ticket on him, and he seems to have worked in a few different schools, as a janitor in one and hall and recess monitors in the others, over the past few years. He's in the wind, though; Henderson sent a panda car to his apartment to pick him up, but there was nobody there and the closet had been emptied. Of course, he hasn't shown up for work since the beginning of the week, either."

Clark scowled. Technically, the schools were still out for Winter Break, but Metropolis Private offered daycare services through the school over the breaks. The hours were shorter than the actual school day, but still allowed working parents to spend a few hours at their jobs. It had been one of Chen's coworkers that Clark had called when he'd initially taken Jason north, alerting them that Jason wouldn't be attending and whatnot.

"Chen was working for Luthor," Clark said, just to have it said aloud. Lois nodded, her expression dark.

"Definitely. And we were being watched. There was a body found, executed, not more than a block from my apartment. Mitchell Johnson. He had all the stuff on him to be watching from the next building over, planning to break in and abduct Jason."

"Thank God he's in Kansas," Clark sighed, scrubbing a tired hand over his face. He hadn't gotten a moment's rest since he'd been flying late the previous afternoon, when he'd awoken in the Fortress. Everything had been go-go-go since then and the stress of it was beginning to catch up to him.

"And another kid washed up in the harbor yesterday morning. Henderson had me look at the body in the morgue, but I didn't recognize him from the bunker. The detectives still think there's a connection to the Napper Neighborhood case, though."

"Why?"

"Because it's a kid in the harbor? I don't know. It's as likely as not at this point, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," Clark sighed again, staring out over the city. The morning light was doing its part to stir him to wakefulness, but it didn't relieve the tension that had become a constant presence since he'd gotten Lois' call. He already had a whopper of a stress headache and it was only getting worse as time went on. "What's your plan from here?"

"I've done all I can here short of turning up for work, and Perry will be expecting a hospital name unless Jason comes in with me, but he can't right now. I was thinking I'd hitch a ride to Kansas."

Clark nodded and took her in his arms before lifting off. It was always a pleasure to fly with Lois, even when they were both on edge and there was no conversation.

_A/N: There ya go; sorry it's so short :) Next update on Tuesday!_


	44. Chapter 44

Jim Harris watched as Superman spoke to Chief Henderson. The Man of Steel had been mysteriously absent for almost three days before he'd returned to his regularly scheduled programming with a vengeance. It seemed that a couple of muggings, two bodies, and a natural disaster had been more than enough to snap him back into form after whatever it was threw him off at the end of the week.

Mostly, Jim tried not to think of what could've happened to Superman. First of all, it felt like he was poking at something private whenever he thought about it. But then, if it was something personal, Jim couldn't help but want to pry a little further, find out a little something more about the Boy Scout. All things considered, the general populace didn't know much beyond his basic back-story as put forth by Lois Lane...

Who had also been missing at the crime scenes through those few days that Superman had been absent, and was still notably absent. Rumor had it her kid had had some sort of episode and she was at a hospital or treatment center out of state with him. Poor kid.

Jim almost did a double-take when he glanced sideways at Superman again. He'd never seen him quite so exhausted, barring those rescues they'd both been involved in that had left the superhero in the back of the ambulance recovering from kryptonite exposure. He looked beyond physically weary, utterly mentally or emotionally overwhelmed, if the EMT was reading the alien man's expression correctly. Just before he took off, shaking hands with the Chief for the photographers, that tired look missing from his face, Henderson seemed to be whispering some words of comfort or some such that only drew a weary nod from Superman. How very odd.

- - -

Lois looked out at the mess on the floor of the barn and sighed. Clark had been helping Jason learn to manage his new strength using balloons. Some of them were filled with air, others with water, others with a mixture of flour and water and glue he called 'gloop.' After a full afternoon of handling the different balloons, Jason had finally managed not to pop the last few right before he'd gone in for dinner.

The whole thing was exhausting, overwhelming.

"Henderson's guys found four more bodies," Clark said from behind her. Lois spun, startled, and gave him a careful look over. He looked as tired as she felt, standing there in his 'home' outfit—jeans and sneakers, a plaid shirt buttoned halfway up over a white t-shirt; the sleeves were all the way down and buttoned, hiding the Suit beneath, but he looked much more casual that he usually did. He wasn't wearing his glasses and hadn't bothered to do away with the spit curl on his forehead, but that only emphasized the wrong-ness of the dark circles under his eyes.

"There was kryptonite on the bodies?" she guessed. Clark nodded, wrapping a hand around her waist and leading her out of the barn and along one of the dirt trails in the yard that wound out into the fields, it was free from snow from its frequent use and only a bit icy. She wore one of the huge, down-lined winter coats that had been on the hook by front door, the barn wasn't as freeze-you-to-the-bones as the outdoors but it was still chilly. With Clark's arm around her, even though he wasn't wearing a scrap of winter wear, she felt herself warming up a bit, the wind not biting into her exposed face as much.

"Not on the bodies," he said, "but near them. Like before, there were fragments of it with labels on them."

"Why do you look so freaked out?" she asked, because 'freaked out' was the only way she could describe the pensive/alarmed look on his face. He raised an eyebrow at her word choice, looking down at her where she was nestled in the crook of his shoulder as they walked, but she just raised an eyebrow back at him.

"All the internal organs had been removed from the bodies."

"What!"

"It was a family of four that washed up in the harbor, all tied together with twine. There was a bow on them, like they were some sort of gift," he shuddered. "A mother, father, two sons, all of them had a Y-incision, like an autopsy, and their skulls had been cut open, their brains removed. The nature of the wounds on their chests, on all of them, made it look like the organ removal had begun while they were still alive."

Lois was fairly certain she was going to be sick, but somehow managed to repress the urge to vomit, clinging to Clark a little tighter.

"How old were the boys?" she heard herself ask.

"Six and ten."

* * *

_A/N: I'll leave you with that lovely image for now... The next update will arrive Thursday as planned :)_


	45. Chapter 45

Christmas Eve seemed to come out of nowhere. After half a week in Kansas, Lois, Clark and Jason had returned to Metropolis, Jason with a little spring in his step to be just like his dad. His new abilities still made him nervous around people—afraid he'd accidentally look through to their skeletons, or that he'd miscalculate when he gave a hug and squash somebody—but he had worked tirelessly, almost literally, and it had paid off. The time with his paternal grandmother had helped things a bit, she telling him lots of stories about how Clark had learned to use his developing abilities when he was young and baking lots of sweets.

Back in the bullpen, things returned to normal relatively quickly. Perry showed the usual grandfatherly concern for Jason's health that he would later deny, having the little boy sit on his lap and talk to him for awhile while his parents worked, even letting him use his office phone to call Richard long-distance and talk for almost twenty minutes. Lois and Clark were too busy catching up with the Napper Neighborhood story and their side projects to notice that Perry spent almost all of his time watching Clark.

Hardly a week after their return to work—and no further bodies in the harbor after that, let alone leads that didn't quickly dead-end—the holidays were upon them, and Lois and Clark found themselves with four days off. Being senior reporters who never used their vacation time if they could help it tended to pay off when the holidays rolled around.

Christmas shopping had been far from their minds, which led to a mad dash the day before Christmas Eve, after Lois and Clark had gotten off of work and sent Charlotte on her way—they'd arranged it with her to watch Jason during the days while they were both on Winter Break, seeing as things had gone so wrong with the school daycare program and the still-elusive Mr. Chen.

They had the benefit of Clark, and Jason for that matter, being able to fly, though. With the Lane-family Christmas dinner beginning at noon at Lucy Troupe's home on Christmas Eve, the gifts for those who would be in attendance—Sam, Ella, Lucy, Ron and their daughters—were first on the list. The three of them hit every major department store in Metropolis within four hours, returning to Lois's apartment with an embarrassing amount of bags.

"Whoa, déjà vu," Lois said, looking at the lot of it spread out on the kitchen counter, thinking back to a similar shopping spree they'd performed in Kansas, the almost identical look they'd gotten from the cashiers both times.

"Let's not make a habit of this," Clark said, chuckling as he looked at the lot of it.

Lois just smiled, not minding the haphazard shopping schedule so long as it meant towing Clark through store after store by the hand, trying not to laugh as he tripped and stumbled over people and displays without actually doing any damage. Jason had found it just as amusing as she had, which had only lengthened the time they'd spent pushing through the crowds.

Clark rolled his eyes at her, seeming to have read her mind. Despite what he said to the contrary, she often got the impression that he was mildly telepathic. Either that or they'd just been working closely together for _way_ too long.

She went up on her tiptoes to kiss him, quickly finding herself held tight in his arms. In the rumpled, too big suit he'd been wearing all evening, minus the heavy coat and scarf he'd worn for appearance's sake, it was easy to forget for awhile just how sturdy he was. Just because the suit made him look awkward in his own skin didn't mean he didn't have the most solid shoulders she'd ever encountered, or the steadiest heartbeat beneath her fingers when she put her hands by his neck. He was too good at making her forget how easy it was to lose herself in _him_.

"Eww," Jason groaned from the doorway behind them, melodramatically clapping his hands over his eyes, but peeking out at them with one eye from between his fingers. "I'm gonna need _so_ much therapy when I'm old."

Clark pulled away from her, laughing the big, deep, hearty sort of laugh that, as close to him as she was, she could feel rumble up from somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. The big smile on his face—she wasn't sure if he was more delighted in Jason or in the fact that they were all together wrapping Christmas presents—was enough to make her heart melt all over again.

"You've been hanging out with your mom too much, Jason," Clark chuckled.

"Is it safe to open my eyes yet?" Jason asked, closing his fingers over his eyes again as Clark leaned down and kissed Lois's forehead. She would've been perfectly happy to stand in the circle of his arms and just be blissful for awhile, but Jason's cheek could not go unpunished—she swooped down on him, unsuspecting as he was with his eyes covered, showering him with kisses and tickling him mercilessly.

Jason shrieked and giggled, escaping her so quickly that her hair tugged after him in the displaced air.

"Oy," she called, turning to look at Clark, arms akimbo; "He's too quick for me. _You _go catch him, and then hold 'im still," she rubbed her palms together diabolically, making Clark laugh again. Jason squealed in the other room as Clark pounced, and she could hear very quick steps on the hardwood floors and the woosh of air even if she couldn't quite make out more than blurs of color as Clark gave chase.

The newspapers she'd had stacked on the coffee table went everywhere and the rug ended up a mess at the end of the hall after only a moment, and then Clark appeared before her, holding Jason upside down by one ankle.

Lois couldn't help but laugh. Jason had his arms crossed, a pleased-with-himself sort of petulant look on him face as he glared at his father. Lois only laughed harder when Jason tried flying away. Clark had too good a grip on his ankle, making it look like Clark was holding onto a Jason-balloon, or taking his helium-filled son for a walk. Sitting down at the kitchen table, eyes watering, it took her a good ten minutes to recover, by which time Jason had been returned to his full upright position with both feet on the floor, he and Clark wearing identical smug expressions at having made her laugh so hard.

-

They ordered pizza and wrapped presents 'til they ran out of tape, then put in Disney's Peter Pan and watched it until Jason fell asleep towards the end. Lois carried him into bed, glad they'd had the forethought to have him wash up and put his pajamas on before they'd started the movie. When she returned to the living room, Clark had cleared away the pizza box and the other remnants of dinner and started restacking the disturbed newspapers.

"We should probably install a strict no-running-in-the-house policy," he commented, flicking out the sports section from a week ago and smoothing the creases into place. "I don't want to _think_ about all the lamps I broke when I was his age."

"But I don't have any lamps," Lois said, gesturing to the room at large which was, indeed, lampless. There were decorative wall sconces in the living room and bedrooms, and overhead lights in the hall, bathroom, and kitchen.

"I don't think lamps are the only thing to worry about, really," Clark replied, rolling his eyes at her. She just smiled cheekily at him, putting the rug back in place as he finished with the papers.

"At this point," she admitted, "I'm just glad he's coping with everything alright. Your mother is a saint."

"I agree," Clark said, laughing and sinking onto the couch with her to look at what remained for wrapping—they'd gotten through more than half before they ran out of tape, but they were running low on wrapping paper as well.

When he'd flown home with Jason straight from the Fortress, he'd only had vague plans forming to help Jason based out of things that had helped him as he grew into his powers, but there was the fact that Jason was younger than he'd been when he'd had most of his powers, and he'd gotten them all at once, more or less. Martha had been completely unfazed, though, merely sending Clark to the store for balloons and sitting Jason, eyes squeezed tight shut behind his glasses, at the kitchen table. She'd gotten him popcorn and a Styrofoam cup of water while she made the messy but fun substance that was 'gloop' from Clark's childhood, waiting for Clark to return.

Lois was more than sure that Martha's even-headedness had kept Jason from worrying about anything himself. Lois wondered what the hell she was supposed to get the older woman for Christmas that would properly convey her gratitude.

"Alright," Clark said, hoisting himself up off the couch at long last. "I'm going to go get more tape. Anything else we need?"

"Wine?" Lois suggested, only half joking.

Clark returned half an hour later with the wrapping necessities and a bottle of the expensive stuff she never splurged on for herself.

"It's a dessert wine," Clark said, consulting the label as he handed over the tape he'd brought, and producing a paper box of chocolate with a wrapper in a different language. "So I got some chocolate, too."

They finished the wrapping quickly, moving on to sipping the wine and feeding each other chocolates. The wine was eventually left open on the coffee table with their partially-drained glasses, the chocolate very much gone, as Clark carried her to the bedroom again, the taste of the wine even more intoxicating when it was on his lips.

- - -

"Happy Christmas Eve!" Jason declared, entering the kitchen as the sun rose. Clark, who had risen earlier than usual to respond to various distress calls around the globe, had to smile. Very much like his mother, Jason rose with spectacular bedhead, but he didn't seem to notice, half climbing half flying up onto a chair to watch what Clark was doing.

"G'morning, Jason. Did you sleep well?"

"Yep," Jason said, still grinning.

"What's got you so cheerful?"

"Tomorrow's Christmas!" he was practically twitching in his seat. Clark felt a moment of panic at that—he hadn't shopped for Jason or Lois or his mother yet. He was usually much more on top of his holiday purchases, almost to the point of having it all done as early as July or August. He only smiled at his son, though, removing the omelet from the frying pan and arranging it on the plate next to two others.

"What would you say to breakfast in bed?" he asked, gesturing to the lap tray he'd dug out from the back of one of the cupboards. He already had an omelet for each of them and a plateful of breakfast potatoes as well as a small stack of toast, pineapple squares, and a mug of coffee for Lois.

"Really?" Jason asked, perking up even more. Clark could only laugh.

"Yeah, c'mon; let's go wake up your mom."

Jason all but blurred into the bedroom and launched himself at his mother. Lois had been in the act of stirring despite the hour—she'd already been up once, when Clark had left early in the morning; she'd put on pajamas while he'd been putting on the Suit, and kissed him goodbye before dropping back into bed—when Jason suddenly appeared above her, about to land on top of her. Shrieking, she scooted toward the headboard, but Jason just laughed, arresting his leap midair and plopping down next to her, cozying himself among the blankets next to her.

"Morning, Mommy."

"You're lucky I love you so much," she grumbled mutinously, eyes lighting up when she saw the mug of coffee at the end of Clark's extended arm.

The morning passed cheerfully. There had been snowfall overnight, leaving the balcony, which they could see through the window in Lois' room, with a pristine blanket of white and making the city beyond seem to glow a bit with the reflected light.

Almost two hours' worth of good food, cuddling, and leisurely chat was almost too much to ask for. Clark wasn't surprised when he heard the devastatingly familiar crackle of flames burst into a frenzy when they came in contact with what could only be accelerant.

Jason had just gotten on the phone with Richard to wish him a Merry Christmas as Clark made spun into the Suit, claiming a hug from Jason before pecking Lois on the cheek. "It sounds like a big one; don't wait for me, I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Alright. Good luck!"

Clark smiled, trying not to dwell on the surreality of saying goodbye to somebody, two somebodies, as he hurried out to tackle a raging fire. He couldn't quite wrap him mind around sharing his life with another person let alone two other people, yet it was so _easy_ to do.

The fire was in the oldest section of the city, downtown not far from the _Planet_ building. The older buildings, unfortunately, used more wood in their construct than any of the newer buildings, and the wood had had more time to dry out over the years. There was also the matter of lead paint on the walls, under layers of newer coats of paint but still there. As such, Clark relied on his hearing more than anything, listening for heartbeats and screams from inside, blocking out, or attempting to block out, the crackle and pop of the roaring flames.

It was impossible that such a fire had started by accident. Besides the fact that he had heard the accelerant catch from across town, the sheer amount of burning material was impossible to be an accident. It was an office building, luckily mostly empty of people seeing as it was Christmas Eve, a very large office building, full of printer paper, canisters of compressed air for cleaning keyboards, and canvas-covered cubicle separators. Even with all those flammable materials, it should've been impossible for the flames to be in all corners of every floor, great clouds of black smoke billowing out of heat shattered windows. He should've heard it long before it reached this stage.

_Suspicious._

Clark swooped down on the building, blowing cooled air down onto the building from one side, putting out the flames nearest the adjacent building. People had gathered in the streets, their last minute shopping (which Clark still needed to get to desperately) and holiday walks in the fresh snow interrupted by the crisis. The fire department was on its way, he could hear the sirens approaching fast.

He rose higher, circling the flaming building, tuning out the sirens, listening for heartbeats inside. There was just one, at the very center of the ground floor, a steady rhythm, slow. Whoever it was was unconscious, probably from smoke inhalation.

_Arson gone bad? Innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time?_ he wondered as he dove again, blowing straight through one of the ground level office windows. He was engulfed in thick, black plumes of smoke, but it didn't matter.

Or rather, it _shouldn't _have mattered.

Clark found himself crashing through false walls inside the building, coming to a rest practically on top of a CPR dummy with Halloween vampire fangs shoved into its mouth and a wooden stake through its chest, a sheet of paper with 'my hero' on it in red ink held in place by the stake. Blinking to try to clear the smoke from his eyes, Clark noted the digital audio recorder duct taped to the dummy's ribs, the 'play' light lit up.

Eyes and throat burning, blinking furiously and unable to cough, Clark grabbed the dummy by the neck and stumbled for the exit. The flames seemed to have died down after burning through the first rush of accelerant, but they were growing again, eating the walls and the false walls that marked cubicle spaces.

The heat was oppressive, seeming to swirl around him in the contained space, pressing in from all sides. Clark couldn't take a good breath, the air was too hot for his lungs and too smoke-laden to be useful.

There was a collective gasp as he crashed through the glass front doors, falling to his knees as soon as he was out of the building. The dummy slipped from his fingers, clattering loudly, to his ears, on the cement next to him. He fell forward, barely catching himself with his hands, coughing and gasping for untainted air, but the smoke seemed to cling in his lungs and prevent him from breathing properly, from breathing deeply enough.

The firefighters had arrived, he could hear them scrambling around him, unwinding hoses and beginning to blast the fire with water. A half familiar man in the uniform of an EMT took dominance in Clark's view; he'd rolled down onto his back and the man's face was all he could see in the gray haze that surrounded the burning building.

Hands on Clark's shoulders urged him into a standing position that only made breathing more difficult. His knees almost gave out, but the hands, now not only on his shoulders but around his chest, urging him forward, wouldn't let him fall. Finally, the jarring, dizzying movement stopped and Clark practically fell backwards, landing on what he recognized as the back bumper of an ambulance.

"Superman," a calm, low voice said, honest brown eyes seeking his own. Clark blinked, recognizing Jim Harris; the investigative reporter, lurking somewhere at the back of his mind, wondered how it was always Harris that appeared at the scenes where he ended up needing medical treatment, but dismissed it when the EMT pressed an oxygen mask to his face and breathing was suddenly not quite so much of a challenge.

Gasping like a fish out of water into the mask, wondering if he should feel like an idiot for falling for the trap, Clark watched the firefighters go to work on the building. They seemed, to his dazed mind, to be attacking it with a vengeance. Idly, blurrily, he noted that the flames escaping the windows of the upper levels, where the hoses couldn't quite reach them, were tinged ominously green.

_A/N: Ahaha; experience my diabolical cackle!_


	46. Chapter 46

"D'ya think Dad will be there when we get there?" Jason asked, his forehead pressed to the cool glass of the car window, watching the tops of the buildings as they drove through Lucy's neighborhood.

"I dunno, Jason," Lois said, turning onto Lucy's street. The morning had passed in a rush after Clark had left to deal with the fire downtown. After they'd put away the breakfast things, Lois had taken a quick shower while Jason practiced his piano—he had a recital in mid-January to be ready for, plus pressing the keys without breaking them was good, subtle practice in controlling his strength. "He said he'd be a little late. It sounded like a big fire."

Jason sighed dramatically in the back seat, making Lois chuckle. They parked in the driveway next to her parents' Prius, Lois loading up her arms with the gifts, mumbling to herself about Jason's inherited strength and the unhelpful need for them to keep it a secret, leaving her with all the heavy bags. He was happy to get the door for her, though.

"Hellooo?" Jason said, knocking lightly before opening the door for her. She could tell he was practically twitching with excitement at the prospect of seeing his cousins again. Despite the age difference and the fact that they were girls, he got along quite well with them.

"Anybody home?" Lois called, dumping the bags next to the door.

"Aunt Lucy! Uncle Ron!" Jason called, impatiently staying still while she unwrapped his scarf, having already opened her coat and loosened her scarf around her neck.

"I'm afraid the Troupes have… stepped out," an unfamiliar masculine voice said from behind them. Lois spun on her heel, pulling Jason close and wrapping his scarf once around his neck again.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Tut tut; such language around one so young," the man said indicating Jason with a move that was almost a threat in itself. Lois glared a moment.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Why, Miss Lane," he said, spreading his hands wide and smiling almost charmingly. "I'm the Boss."

Lois blinked at him. He wasn't Lex Luthor; that was for sure.

The man facing her was built like a bean pole—tall and gangly, at least six foot seven, with long, pale hands and a long, pale face with a narrow nose and gray eyes. He wore an elegant khaki suit and with a starched white shirt and a vibrant red tie. The only color about him was that red tie; even his slicked-back hair was a bland blond-ish gray.

The Boss was the embodiment of the ghost his operation was.

"Hey," another voice said, this man coming from the living room dressed in teal scrubs and greasy motorcycle boots, she turned to him at the odd, questioning tone in his voice and looked at the dish rag he held in his hand, "does this smell like chloroform to you?"

"Wha—?"

"I've always wanted to say that," the man said as Lois felt the world go fuzzy, the dish rag scratchy against the lower half of her face, the smell of what was, without question, chloroform sticking in her nostrils.

* * *

_A/N: And _there_'s the reason behind that laugh... :)_

_Thank you to everybody that reviewed that last chapter! I really enjoyed reading through them (even if it made me feel a little bad for leaving you with that over the weekend... and now only making it worse with a shorter chapter-- at least you only have to wait 'til Thursday for the continuation!!)_

_Thank you all, again!_

_-- mak :)_


	47. Chapter 47

Lois's head felt as though it was filled with cotton balls. Her mouth and throat were dry and she could still smell the ghost of the chemical that had knocked her out. She took stock of her body before she opened her eyes—she was lying on a somewhat soft surface on her side, another softish surface against her back. _In the back seat of a car_? Her hands were handcuffed together in front of her, the metal warm against her skin.

She blinked her eyes open—she was indeed in the back of a car; her own car. The clock on the dashboard read 1p, meaning she'd been out for less than an hour. Jason's dark head was visible in the front seat, sitting on the Boss's lap. The man in scrubs and motorcycle boots was driving.

A groan escaped from her throat before she could swallow it down.

"Ah, you've joined us once again, Miss Lane," the Boss said, turning slightly in the seat so he could look over his shoulder at her as she tried to get into a sitting position. Jason twisted full around and peered over the back of the seat at her with worried eyes. He looked so very much like his father in that moment that it made Lois's breath catch in her throat.

"Jason, honey, are you okay?" she asked, ignoring the Boss completely. As she'd found was the norm in any piece of investigative journalism that was truly interesting, once she'd pinned down the person or thing she was after she wanted it as far away from herself as it could get.

"I'm okay, Mom," he assured her, still watching her with anxious eyes.

"You have no need to worry about your son, Miss Lane," the Boss smiled his charming smile again, stroking Jason's hair, making Lois's skin crawl. "No, nothing to worry about. We have gone through far too much trouble to procure this boy to muck things up by hurting him now."

A thousand threats were on the tip of Lois's tongue but none of them made it out of her mouth as they were too busy warring with each other to be the first to be thrown at the Boss and his thug.

"I'm okay, Mom," Jason said again, shifting his head away from the man uncomfortably. The Boss smirked, his face twisting evilly, and turned to look out the front window again.

- - -

General Lane stood, straight-backed and stony-faced, beside the sofa on which his wife was sitting. Lucy had nearly cried herself out on her husband's shoulder—Ron looked more than a bit stony-faced himself. Ella simply sat on the edge of the sofa, working her handkerchief to a pulp between her fingers.

They'd gathered at the Troupes' house for the usual Christmas Eve dinner, chance bringing the elder Lanes to the house before Lois and her son. Despite his lifetime in the military, the General had been no match for the chloroform, waking handcuffed in the back of some sort of truck; a bag had been put over his head and they'd been led out of the truck and into a building of some sort, down quite a few hallways with plenty of turns, and into the room they still occupied. Lucy had immediately begun screaming and banging on the door when they'd realized her children had been taken someplace else after they'd gotten off the truck.

The room looked like a break room if it looked like any particular sort of room—beige walls, cheap sofa, fridge and microwave. The single difference was a steel-reinforced door without a handle. There was bottled water in the fridge and popcorn stacked next to the microwave.

"Why did this happen?" Lucy moaned into Ron's shoulder. The General wanted desperately to go comfort his daughter but couldn't bring himself to—he had never been the comforting type, not even when she was little. Instead, he kept himself rigidly straight and watched the door, hoping for some fore-warning when it opened so that he would be able to jump into action in time to have an effect.

- - -

"Say goodbye to your son, Miss Lane," the Boss said, pausing outside another unremarkable doorway.

It had been a long, long drive, over bridges and through tunnels. Headaches and worry about Jason sitting on the Boss' lap in the front seat kept Lois from properly keeping track of their whereabouts. They'd arrived at a warehouse indistinguishable from the one next to it and the thug had manhandled her through the door, the Boss calmly dragging Jason along behind, then taking the lead.

Inside the warehouse was as beige and bland as the Boss himself. Beige walls and gray cement floors made the place up, yet there was an aura of hostility embedded in everything as well. Again, much like the Boss.

"What?" Lois asked, shocked, staring from the Boss to her son and back.

"This is where you part ways," the Boss opened the door to reveal Lois's twin nieces sitting on stainless steel stools next to each other, faces streaked with tears; they were attached to their stools by handcuffs around one wrist. The room was spotless white—sterile like a hospital. There was a gurney against one wall, a clump of raggedy looking children Lois half-recognized from her time in the bunker gathered nearby.

"No!" Lois screamed, lunging for her son. Jason pulled away from the Boss, grabbing for his mother's hands but only managing to catch onto the bit of the handcuffs that linked her wrists. It jolted something fierce when the Boss caught Jason easily around the waist and yanked him back, taking Lois with him and bringing her to her knees. The Boss chuckled, flashing too-white teeth as he hauled the pair of them apart; the thug in scrubs pulling Jason's fingers from the handcuffs.

"Mom!" Jason shouted, struggling briefly with the Boss before he was subdued. Lois wondered which one of them had kryptonite—probably the Boss.

"Aunt Lois!" the twins in the white room began shouting as well, eyes wide and panicked.

"Boss," the thug said, holding Lois pinned awkwardly to his side with one arm and using his free hand to hold out her hands and display the chain that ran between them. The Boss smirked—the links were squished together where Jason's fist had squeezed them tight.

"Oh, yes. It's time."

"No! No!" Lois screamed, kicking and flailing. Jason began doing the same, but the Boss pulled a neatly folded white cloth from his pocket and placed it over Jason's mouth and nose. After a moment Jason was limp. A woman in blue scrubs came into view and took the boy from the Boss and disappeared into the white room. Lois screamed louder, punching, scratching, biting… the Boss just smirked his evil smirk and watched without moving until he was out of sight.

- - -

The break room the Troupes and Lanes had been confined to was a bleak setting indeed. Lucy had joined her mother on the sofa after a few hours, the two women slumping together on the lumpy thing in silence, watching the door as ardently as the General. Ron had been pacing since the microwave clock had read three o'clock (it now read seven).

The General had yet to move, though his ramrod posture had relaxed into a slumped-shoulder sort of exhausted attention.

The four of them straightened up, Ron and the General moving closer to the door, when enraged screaming penetrated into the break room. The precise words were impossible to decipher through the walls and because of the pure rage fueling it—the words certainly weren't needed for the meaning to make it across.

The four of them exchanged confused looks before refocusing on the door as the locks clicked and the bolt ground out of place.

The door burst open a moment later to reveal two huge thugs struggling to control Lois's flailing form. Her usual strong presence was only enforced by her rage as she fought against them. One was trying to contain her limbs while the other had opened the door, only to take a stocking-clad foot between the legs.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!" Lois screamed, twisting her arms around and catching the thug holding onto her in the nose. Blood poured out and he dropped her with a bellow, kicking at her where she landed as he pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned forward so as not to bleed on himself. Lois screamed again, more in rage than in pain. She kicked—one shoe on, one shoe held in her fist—at the thug that had opened the door as he tried to grab her by the feet to drag her into the break room, and whacked at the bleeding man with the high-heeled shoe held between her hands. "THEY'RE CHILDREN! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! GIVE ME BACK MY SON _THIS INSTANT_!" the last two words were punctuated by hearty whacks with the heel of her shoe at the thug who'd gotten hold of one of her ankles. He swore and dropped the ankle, shaking out the hand the before grabbing her by the wrist and hauling her up and slapping her so hard her head spun.

Dazed for the moment, Lois stumbled forward as he thrust her into the room, Ron moving forward to catch her. She caught herself first, though, spinning around and raising the shoe as though she was going to throw it; another scream rose from her gut, filled with all the anger a mother after the men who hurt her child. The door slammed solidly closed before she could make good with her throw, and her scream simply echoed around the silent break room, terrifying and haunting both as it turned into a sob at the end.

"_DAMMIT_!" she threw the shoe on the ground instead, hands balled into fists.

Lucy moved forward, looking down at the shoe before circling around into her sister's line of sight.

"Lois. Are you alright?"

"_No_, I'm _not_ _al__**right**_!" she rounded on her sister, then stopped when she realized who it was she was yelling at. "Lucy. What are you doing here?"

"Th-they took the girls!" Lucy sobbed. Ron came up behind her, face as serious as it had been for the duration of the day. "They showed up this morning and put us in a van, then dragged us through here. They just shoved the twins into another room as we passed…"

"They're okay, so far," Lois said, picking up her shoe and turning it over in her hands. It occurred to her that she was lucky the heel hadn't broken off or something. She hopped around for a moment as she put it back on her foot. She was too furious with the thugs and the Boss to feel sorry for her sister or herself.

"You saw them?" Ron asked, his voice cracking. Once again, Lois realized that, despite Ron's tall, square build, he was a lover not a fighter, one of those men born to be a father.

"They were in the white room they yanked Jason into," the corner of her mouth twitched up without her permission. "They had to gas him to get him in there."

"Were they okay?" Lucy asked.

"Is Jason alright?" Ella jumped in, standing not far behind Ron.

Lois shrugged.

"The kids from the bunker were there, too."

"The bunker?" the General asked.

"Why are they _doing_ this?" Lucy asked, brushing away fresh tears.

"This is all my fault," Lois said, forcefully wiping away tears of her own and glaring around the room, looking for a way out. "I stuck to the story and now it's come back to bite me again…" Lois ran her hands over her face in exhaustion, her mind taking her to a million horrible places, imagining the experiments that had once been suggested. Thinking of that family that had washed up in the harbor, all twined together, their autopsies begun before they'd even died…

"What's going on, Lois," Ron asked, though it was hardly a question so much as an order. Lois looked up at him then sank to the floor, pulling her knees up to her chest and sitting against the wall next to the door, pressing her lips tight together.

- - -

Clark's lungs finally seemed to ease after what seemed like an eternity. He was in the back of an ambulance, but it wasn't moving. Jim Harris sat above him, holding an air mask in place and watching the monitor with sharp eyes.

"I shut the doors when the photographers started making these lights redundant," Harris said, indicating the lights in the ceiling.

Clark continued to breathe slowly, wind pipe burning with every breath he took.

"They got the fire out okay; the building will probably have to be knocked down and rebuilt, there's no hope for it, but nobody was killed," Clark wondered if the EMT said 'nobody was killed' because somebody had been hurt, or because it was just the way he'd chosen to word it. "You've been out for almost four hours. There was kryptonite in the fire, covered in gasoline."

_This was a distraction_, Clark realized in a panic, trying to patch together what he remembered from before he'd blacked out watching those greenish flames. _Somebody set the fire so that I would be incapacitated after I responded and they could get away with something else. Something more subtle and, more than likely, more harmful to the general populace. _

… _or perhaps just to me_.

_Either way, I've missed Lois' Christmas dinner at the Troupes'. What a great way to restart our official relationship, missing Christmas with her family. The General already hates me. And Jason was looking forward to it, too… And Lois will have made an excuse for me. She'll probably be furious. _

Clark sat up straight, startling Harris into stillness. His lungs burned even more when the mask was removed, but it faded, if only slightly, after a moment. At least he could breathe.

* * *

_A/N: Well, there's a longer update, yeah? Thanks again to all of you who reviewed-- it's a highlight of my day to sit down and remember that people actually read this and don't think it's crap!_

_The plot will continue to thicken next Tuesday; have a great weekend!_


	48. Chapter 48

Alice was not happy with him. His employees were not happy with him. Generally, everybody that knew him was rather displeased with him, at the moment. It was Christmas Eve and, because he was the Editor-in-Chief of the _Daily Planet_, he had to make sure somebody was covering Superman and his latest stint in the back of an ambulance because of kryptonite. It was becoming increasingly frequent, his exposure to that fatal substance. And because it was Christmas Eve and he was forcing a core staff to report to the bullpen—instead of the skeleton staff he required for holidays—he had decided it was his responsibility to put in an appearance.

The elevator dinged to announce its arrival at his chosen floor and Perry pulled himself out of his ruminations to look properly intimidating. The doors slid open to reveal his bullpen, with gleaming floors, tidy desks, and blank monitors.

The bullpen itself was empty, so were all the offices for the section editors. The conference room, though, was full. He had about a second to register the stillness of the people gathered in the conference room before th sound of a gun cocking to his left drew his attention.

"Hello, Mister White. Nice of you to join us," the man holding the gun said. He was dressed all in black and held a hand gun up and ready.

"And who might you be?" Perry asked smoothly, though he certainly didn't feel smooth. He held his hands up in the most non-threatening way he could manage and gazed at the man in black.

"Move. Get in the conference room," the man in black ordered, gesturing with the gun.

"If you say so," Perry agreed, keeping his hands up as he walked toward the conference room.

* * *

_A/N: Next chapter coming soon!_


	49. Chapter 49

Clark dialed Perry's office number again, letting it ring through to voicemail before ending the call and dialing Lois's cell phone. No answer. He called Jimmy's desk phone.

"CK?!" Jimmy's voice answered, sounding a little more than panicked.

"Jimmy! Jimmy, what's going on? Is everybody okay?" Clark asked, jamming his finger into the button for the bullpen again, wishing the elevator would go faster. It was past eight at night, he'd been out of contact with everybody for hours upon hours. It had taken next to eternity to extricate himself from Jim Harris' ambulance between the EMT's insistence that he stay and get his breathing back to normal, and the press outside. He'd made it to his apartment just in time to crash onto his couch and hope he didn't stop breathing while he slept. He'd woken, dressed in the first clothes to come to hand, and gotten a cab, dialing Lois, Jimmy, Perry, and the Troupes' home phone alternatively, worry growing with each unanswered call.

None of his powers had returned yet. None of them. Whoever had planted the kryptonite had known what they were doing.

"I don't know! Where are you? I thought you'd been taken, too."

"Taken?"

"Yeah; that's what it looks like happened. Everybody who was in to cover the Superman story is missing."

"Have you called the police?"

"No, I just got here. I hadn't quite gotten past the sight of it yet."

"Call the police. I'll be up in a minute."

- - -

Lois was beside herself. She hurt all over from blows delivered in the struggle, and there was a sharp pain inside at the loss of her son. She'd broken half of her fingernails trying to get the door open by prying at it around the edges with her hands—even with her family's help she'd had no luck. The four of them were still waiting for answers but Lois couldn't bring herself to explain it to them, her mind too consumed by her worry.

Without prelude, the door swung open, knocking Ron to one side from where he'd been pacing in front of it. Lois and the General leapt at the man dressed in black entering, but he raised a gun and they both froze. Two more men with guns entered behind, one pointing his weapon at Lois's forehead and keeping her sitting against the wall, the other two covering the rest of those in the break room.

"Tut tut," the Boss said, smiling his charming smile. Lois wanted to tear into his perfectly smooth skin to shreds with her cracked fingernails and she was sure her gaze made that clear; the Boss only continued to smile. "I would've expected more courtesy. I come to bring you a bit of entertainment and you make to attack me," his eyes softened and he shook his head, looking deeply hurt.

Lois locked her jaw, knowing that anything that made it out of her mouth at that point would earn her a bullet in the brain faster than Superman could blink. The Boss' hurt look turned into his evil smirk when he saw it.

"I think you will enjoy the program already in progress on 102.8," the Boss said flippantly before striding back out of the room, pausing only in the doorway to look down at Lois. "And I do thank you for bringing your son all this way, Miss Lane. He is a most _fascinating_ subject. And it was so kind of your sister to provide two extra control subjects, and with the similar DNA on the maternal side," his too-white teeth gleamed. "So kind."

He was gone a moment later, the henchmen backing out of the room one at a time, keeping their weapons trained on those to be locked in the room. Lois's 'guard' was the last out, his comrade pulling the door closed with a bang.

It occurred to Lois that the Boss hadn't even so much as looked at the others in the room, despite having passed very near the General to place the battery-powered radio that looked as though it might've come straight out of the '80s next to the microwave.

"What was that station he said?" Lois asked, voice shaking more than she would've liked.

"102.8," Ron said. He had Lucy in his arms, trying to settle her shaking. Lois tuned the radio without looking at them, hating that it was her fault they'd been dragged into this.

_My poor, perfect sister,_ she thought, twisting the dial into position. _You had an unblemished suburban life before I dragged you into this. Not even Ron had ever had a gun pointed at him. Neither had Momma. This is all my fault!_

102.8 was playing a commercial for a furniture chain when they tuned it, but it cut off halfway through to introduce a breaking news bulletin: "_Moments ago, police swarmed the _Daily Planet_ building in central Metropolis when an employee called in to report that the bullpen-level of the building had been ransacked. Sources tell that not only was the bullpen, an entire floor of the landmark building, completely trashed, but all but a handful of the holiday staffers have gone missing. _

"_We don't need to mention that this is only the latest in a growing number of alarming circumstances that began with the apartment fire early this afternoon that incapacitated Superman. We have yet to receive any news on the Man of Steel's medical condition; witnesses report he was taken away in a Met. General ambulance, but he was not seen at that same hospital that treated him just over a year ago after the New Krypton incident."_

Lois sank to the floor again, now leaning against the cabinets. The anchor for the FM station sounded as though he were forming a bullet-point list into full sentences to deliver on-air, as though he really was giving a 'just in' report. The man sounded truly frightened, which didn't help Lois at all, either.

"_We have been made aware that the editor-in-chief of the _Daily Planet_ and most of the regular staff is missing, including Lois Lane, Superman's press contact. Her writing partner, Clark Kent, was one of the journalists in the bullpen when police arrived on the scene."_

_Clark's okay!_ the back of Lois's mind screamed for joy, but she couldn't bring herself to move. She listened to the rest of the announcement in a daze, wanting to hit something, wanting to know what was going on.

Clark and Jimmy were alright, she learned. Jimmy had been the one to call the police. The bullpen was a disaster, fifteen journalists, photographers and editors missing all-told. The bullpen was a wreck and the police were still combing over it for any sort of clues. The radio didn't tell of what sort of investigation Clark had mounted, but Lois hadn't really expected it to. Knowing Clark, though, he would be sitting at his desk shooing Henderson and his men away, calling in favors. Lois wondered off-hand if he would involve Batman.

* * *

_A/N: Soon enough? *lol*_

_The next update won't be quite so soon, however. I'm officially done with my Tuesday/Thursday morning summer internship, so there's no guarantee I will be awake and headed over to the library reliably. Good news is, the rest of the story is more-or-less completely written, so updates should be about as regularly as I can get to the library (and it's summer, and I read in the summer, so it should be fairly regular). So- next update sometime at the end of the week, Thursday-Saturday-ish. Bad news is, school starts up again in two weeks and I'll have, y'know, homework to interfere with things._

_- mak:)_


	50. Chapter 50

Perry stood in the kitchen of an average-seeming apartment, hands restrained behind his back with little plastic ties that cut into his wrists something awful. Most of his staff was restrained similarly and attached to a partner, all of them packed like sardines in the bedroom of the apartment.

The knife block was sitting on the counter next to the stove, mocking him in its emptiness. Their captors had cleaned the place out; there wasn't even any furniture left in any of the rooms the editor had seen, nothing but a few scattered remains of a life that had been lived in the tiny apartment.

Perry wondered off-hand whether the owner of the apartment had cleared out on his/her own or if the men who had captured him had killed the apartment owner of lessee and then cleared it to their own purpose.

"Mr. White," a hauntingly familiar voice said from the entryway, making Perry's head snap up and his musing cut off abruptly. Lex Luthor smirked, giving most of his attention to a pair of black leather gloves he was tugging onto his hands. "So good to see you again; it's been too long."

"Lex Luthor," Perry said in as close to a drawl as he could manage. The tall bald man was wearing all black, like the men with guns scattered around the apartment keeping the _Daily Planet_ staff from rising up. His dome of a head shone in the fluorescent light of the kitchen. "Can't say I'm glad to see you again."

Luthor merely smirked crookedly, turning his attention to the doorway to the side through which lay the living room and it's tightly packed occupants. The smirk deepened slightly and his eyes gleamed.

"That doesn't matter very much, Mr. White," Luthor said, returning his attention to the editor. The dark eyes held a menace Perry wasn't sure he would've been comfortable with even in his prime, when he'd been chasing down his own bad guys—he certainly didn't feel prepared to deal with Superman's nemesis after so many years off the beat. "It's time for us to go."

"Go?" Perry asked dumbly.

"Yes; go," Luthor mocked, smirk disappearing entirely.

A henchman gripped Perry's elbow behind his back roughly and began guiding him out after Luthor. Perry dug his heels in as they passed the doorway to the living room, seeing his panicked staff standing there, packed together. Thugs were packing them closer together, forcing them to stay close by way of more plastic ties between them.

"Move," the thug at his elbow growled, but Perry stayed put, eyes fixed on the shortest of the thugs. The man wasn't particularly muscular, nothing to suggest he was hired for the same reasons the other men were probably hired—but Perry had noticed the thick square the man was holding, the one labeled C4.

"Move along, Mr. White," Luthor said from the hall, smirking again. "We have a bit of leverage here, you know."

- - -

Clark paced the _Daily Planet_ roof, wishing he had any one of his abilities back. As it was, it was a struggle to even breathe properly. Anything more than a short puff of breath led to a burning sensation in the pits of his lungs in addition to the constant ache that they had become after he'd inhaled the kryptonite-laden smoke from the fire.

He glared at his collection of cell phones, waiting for one of them to ring; he had no other moves available until one of them rang and _somebody_ reported back to him.

He'd called his Metropolis contacts first, pulling out a fresh map of Metropolis and spreading it across his trashed desk—whoever had ransacked the bullpen had done a very thorough job, spilling everything from every desk onto the floor and leaving nothing unbroken except for the copy machine. Clark had had to chuckle at that—the machine _never_ did what it was supposed to be doing.

He'd called his grid of useful people in all levels of existence in Metropolis as he had when Lois had been stolen from her parents' house and stashed in the bunker beneath the warehouse by the harbor. It took less than half the time it had before to establish that the _Planet_'s staff wasn't anywhere that anybody knew about.

After considering the amount of time the criminals responsible had had to move and hide the staff, Clark had called Bruce—Gotham was the next logical place to look.

A few calls to Lois' cell phone had drawn him out of the bullpen to the Troupe residence, finding the front door wide open and the house completely empty. He'd called Henderson and another investigation had been piled on top of the first, though the fact that Lois Lane had been abducted with her family and not from the bullpen with the rest of the _Planet_ staff had been withheld from the media.

There was a frustrating lack of evidence, which Clark quickly decided was the most infuriating part about being without his abilities for the time being—he usually could have flown overhead and peered into every nook and cranny of the city when the leads dried up; now he couldn't even do that.

He leapt when his cell phone vibrated, skittering across the box he'd set it down on.

"Find anything?" he asked, not bothering with the pleasantries—the caller ID had read Batman (the cell phone that had rung was the one he used as Superman when it was necessary) and neither of them needed pleasantries in the current situation.

"Not what you had me looking for, but I did find something," Bruce said in his grainy Batman voice, no more than a whisper—not that Clark's voice was any better, at the moment.

"What is it?"

"I went to those tunnels I'd seen Bill around before—they were locked down as ever, but I noticed something I hadn't before," Clark waited with baited breath, wishing his friend would get on with it. Bruce seemed to be processing what he was saying as he said it, though; as though he were still in shock at what he had stumbled upon. "I was about to leave when a few guys came out and held the doors open for four U-Hauls to drive out. Mid-sized, the type somebody moving from a small apartment to another small apartment would rent. The tunnel closed up again afterward and I followed the U-Hauls—they went straight to a warehouse, drove inside."

"_And_?" Clark prompted urgently.

"They all came out again in a hurry almost half an hour later. I stopped two of them, but another two kept going. I got a tracker on one of them, it's headed straight to Metropolis. It'll be there in about two hours if it keeps on track and doesn't run into any traffic."

"What did you find in the two you stopped?" Clark asked, not bothering to ask _how_ a single man dressed as a bat had stopped two U-Hauls more than likely carting illegal goods or kidnapped people and driven by criminals. It was just what Batman did. And he did have a rather snazzy car.

"One had medical equipment in it, samples. I'm fairly certain I found the organs those bodies that washed up in your harbor were missing and then some… I brought them back to the Cave, I'm looking over it all now," something in his voice told Clark that the samples were exactly what he thought they were, what he'd been afraid they would be the moment he found that Lois and Jason had gone missing. "The second one had three hostages and a few more racks of testing equipment."

"Who were the hostages?"

"They say they're Lois's family. General Sam Lane, Ella Lane, Ron Troupe."

"What about Lucy? Lois's sister, Ron's wife?"

"Not in the second U-Haul," Bruce said. Clark wondered where he was, where Lois's family had gotten to.

"Well?"

"I brought them back to the Cave and called Gordon, he'll be here any minute. I want to get this stuff to Metropolis, there were a few off-duty cops driving the first U-Haul. _God_, I thought I'd flushed things out better than this," the tension in Bruce's voice was enough to make Clark pause a moment before pressing for more answers.

"Anything else? Who were the cops working for? Did the Lanes say anything?"

"The Boss, Clark," Bruce said through gritted teeth. "Troupe said it was the Boss that was holding them."

"Lex Luthor?"

"No, it wasn't him."

"_What_?" Clark began pacing again, all the plans and thoughts that had formed in his mind were based off of Luthor as the Boss. A new villain threw a rather large wrench in his thought processes.

"Yeah. I don't even know if Luthor is a part of this. The Boss was the one the cops were working for; there was no mention of Luthor. The Lane sisters were separated from the rest of the group after a bit of an issue with the kids, apparently."

"What did they do to the kids?"

"I don't know—they don't know. From what I've discovered looking at this stuff, it's not good. My bet is that they took the mothers to either placate the kids or use them as hostages."

"Oh, God."

"I'm fairly certain they were in the other U-Hauls. They left the warehouse in flames, I looked around a bit before the fire got too bad—there was a lab, but it was cleared out."

"They set it on fire?"

"They knew I was tailing them."

"Great."

"You're welcome."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know—look, I've got to go. Gordon just pulled up."

"In the Cave?"

"No, I'm meeting him at a more anonymous location."

"Right."

"I'll call when I have more information."

"I'll put MPD in contact with Gordon."

Clark closed his phone and shoved it deep in his pocket, picking up his second cell phone, the one he used as Clark Kent for everyday and business things, and walking back across the roof for the door and the stairs back to the bullpen.

* * *

_A/N: Next update will be... Monday? Hopefully Monday._


	51. Chapter 51

Clark practically ran into the hospital, had to work hard to keep from shouting at the nurse at the desk when she wouldn't give him Lois's room number. Glaring fiercely—the nurse actually looked a bit frightened and shifted to push the silent call button for security—he stepped away and pulled out his cell phone, punching in Henderson's number with shaking fingers.

"Kent," Henderson said from a side door just as his cell began to ring. Clark hung up and followed the chief through the door and down the hall without a word. Up the elevator, down another hall, then they were there. Policemen moved in and out of a few different rooms, getting annoyed but tolerant looks from the nurses who were doing the same.

"_No_," Lois's voice reached his ears before he even opened the door to her room as Henderson directed him. "I don't _need_ a blood test, I need to get _out _of here and find my _son_. He was _taken_ from me, I want _out of here_!"

"Lois," he said, bursting into the room, his voice was still more of a coarse version of his natural speaking voice, it hurt too much to try to pitch it up to the voice he spoke with at work. He was only lucky Jimmy and the others had been too busy worrying about their missing colleagues to ask why he sounded so off.

"Clark!" Lois cried, throwing herself at him as he stepped up to her bedside. The doctor sitting beside her looked like he was about ready to snap, but he held a vial of Lois's blood, collected as he'd wanted, so he didn't complain. "Are you okay? I heard what happened…!"

"I'm fine," he brushed her off, holding her tight and wishing he could do it for the rest of eternity. "There's still no sign of Perry or anybody else, though. Jimmy and Gil are following up on a few things right now."

Gil was one of three _Planet_ employees including Jimmy who had been 'on duty' over Christmas but hadn't been in the bullpen when the staff had been abducted.

_Funny that the alien shows up _after_ the Earthlings are abducted_, that ever-commentating voice at the back of Clark's brain that sounded like a nearly drunk Lois said irreverently. _And it's the alien trying to get them back_. Clark viciously shushed his inner monologue.

"Clark, they took _Jason_. They took him away and they put him in a lab!" she cried, suddenly collapsing against him. All the emotion she'd kept bottled up to fuel her rage poured out and it was all he could do to keep her from slipping down to the floor. He held her tighter and sank onto the bed with her, trying to comfort her even with all the apprehension and anger that filled his gut as well.

"We'll find him, sweetheart," he promised, stroking her hair and looking around the room as he held her. Lucy was in the other bed, watching them with a terrified look around her eyes as the doctor drew her blood as well since he was finished with Lois. She seemed to be in shock more than anything. "We'll find him."

"How did they do this? Why would they do this?" Lois moaned, fists clutching his shirt tightly. The doctor walked out and left them alone. Henderson was visible standing just outside through the circular window in the door. Clark continued to stroke Lois' hair, not sure how he should answer.

"There was a fire this morning, arson. An old office building burned to the ground with kryptonite coated in gasoline inside. Superman is completely out of commission—somebody wanted it that way so that they could pull this off without interference."

"Shit," Lois mumbled, extricating herself from him a bit, glancing at her sister momentarily. Lucy was listening silently, pale and shaking.

"Yeah. From what I've been able to dig up, the Troupes and your parents were taken at the same time the fire was started, you and Jason a little later. They found your car in a warehouse in Gotham that was on fire—I hope your insurance covers fire damage or theft or something," Lois just shrugged. "Batman found the U-Hauls you were found in close to ten last night, got a tracker on the one you and Lucy and the doctors were in, that's how MPD was able to get you. Did you know Bill Ganelon was the one that was driving?" Lois shook her head. "Well he was; the police have been grilling him all morning but he hasn't been very useful. We thought he was a brain in the operation, but he was a pawn—maybe the ring leader in Metropolis to a point, but nothing more. Henderson said that Bill was the one in charge of getting the kids and getting them to Gotham. The Boss had different guys doing everything else, like kidnapping you, after Bill's guys brought you to that bunker."

"Great. We only managed to pick up on the stupid one who wasn't smart enough to do things properly," Lois said bitterly. "How the hell are we going to find Jason if we haven't even had a scent of the other guys until they smashed out in the open? And with y-Superman out of commission!"

"We'll manage, Lois," Clark said, infusing it with such stubborn confidence that she almost believed him. "They're spread out, moving in Gotham and Metropolis, and we've got a few ins in Gotham—MPD is helping out there, as, officially, they're sharing the case. There were a few GCPD driving the U-Haul that your parents and Ron were in, though."

"Is Ron okay?! What happened?" Lucy burst out, eyes going even wider. Clark paused a moment, realizing that he'd left that part out and immediately feeling terrible for keeping them in the dark.

"He's fine, they're all fine. Batman stopped two of the U-Hauls, and MPD stopped the one you were in—only one got away. As far as we know it's somewhere in Metropolis," he wanted to punch something at that thought—the _one_ van that had gotten away was the one with Jason, and Lois' nieces, and a group of starved, terrified children in it. "Ron and your parents are being checked out at a hospital in Gotham before they chopper over here. I'm meeting them on the roof in twenty minutes."

"I want to come with you," Lucy said, sitting up straight. Clark just shook his head.

"The doctors won't let you guys out."

"_What_?" Lois said, throwing up her hands. "Doctors are ridiculous. We're fine."

"They're doctors. It's what they do," Clark said, flapping a hand at her to brush the protests away. "They'll be here soon, they're fine. Batman has the tests and things they did in the lab in the warehouse," his voice was darker, grainier, his overall demeanor was darker. Lucy didn't protest about not being allowed to meet her husband on the roof anymore. "He hasn't called me back yet about what, exactly, they were testing for, but," he looked at Lois, "I have an idea."

"Yeah, so do we," she replied, including Lucy in the statement. Clark was immediately a little worried, but the doctor interrupted what would've been his next question.

"Mr. Kent, the chopper is landing," the man said, poking his head in the door. Clark pecked Lois on the cheek before getting up from the bed.

"I'll be right back," he said, keeping her in sight as long as he could as he exited, torn between not wanting to leave her and wanting to go meet with Bruce briefly on the roof before he returned to Gotham. His findings in the Cave on the tests the Boss had run on Jason and the others were too sensitive to be shared over the phone, even a pair of phones so protected as the lines they used as Batman and Superman.

Henderson handed him a plastic pass that would allow him back into the secure ward then fell into step beside Clark, two of the officers following behind. Clark suspected that he wouldn't have any trouble moving about the hospital with his current entourage, but he didn't say anything, just clipped the pass to his lapel and kept walking.

It still hurt to breathe.

- - -

Jimmy left another voicemail for Clark before going down the steps into the subway after Gil. The pair of them were taking the express to Gotham, meeting one of Clark's shadier sources there on a tangent they'd been following since 2am. They were both exhausted, but they were carrying on nonetheless. They were each well into their dozenth cup of coffee and they could feel it.

The _Daily Planet_'s staff had disappeared into the wind, but, in the search, a lead for the missing kids from the Napper Neighborhood case had popped up. Jimmy and Gil had willingly followed it, knowing that Clark's contact wouldn't offer the tip again.

-

The man they met at the Narrows station was young and wearing a shabby pinstriped suit. He sat on a bench waiting for them, shuffling and reshuffling a deck of worn cards.

"Mr. Blakeney?" Gil asked, approaching the man sitting in the shadow. He stopped shuffling his cards and looked up, his fedora keeping his young face in shadow still.

"You must be those guys from Metropolis. You look like guys from Metropolis," he smirked, standing and holding out his cards. Gil took them uncertainly. "Aces are high. Pass my condolences on to Kent."

He got onto the train behind him just as the doors closed, and grinned at them as the train sped away.

"What the hell was that?" Jimmy asked, taking the cards from Gil and looking them over. Altogether unremarkable playing cards.

"No idea," Gil shook his head, staring at the cards as well. "We just wasted a good block of time, though, coming out here."

"Maybe that was the point," Jimmy said, throwing the cards down onto the bench. A paper fluttered from between two of the cards when he did so and both journalists stepped toward it.

The crisply folded note was still caught between a pair of aces. Jimmy pulled it out and opened it up. On it were directions to and overpass and a quickly approaching, hastily scrawled time in the bottom corner.

The pair of them got onto the next train headed toward Metropolis, praying they'd make it on time and wishing they got cell phone reception in the Narrows.

- - -

Clark stood on the roof of the hospital watching the Wayne Enterprises helicopter land, his hair whipping around his face and into his eyes. He brushed it away again and again, but it just blew back into his eyes. The police officers standing with him held onto their hats.

The engines finally cut out and the door slid open. Bruce had piloted the flight himself, unwilling to call his usual pilot in the dead of night because it would've taken the man a lifetime to get moving. He helped Mrs. Lane out, then stood by while the General and Ron got out as well.

"They're in room 318," he told Ron when he walked up to grip Clark's hand once. "No sign of Perry or anybody from the _Planet_ yet."

Ron nodded once and set off at a good clip for the stairs back to the rest of the hospital. Ella and the General followed more slowly, the General watching him suspiciously, but Clark ignored them. Bruce stood near the helicopter waiting.

"What did you find out?" he asked in a low voice so that their conversation wouldn't carry to the officers that remained on the roof.

"I've only had time to run the very basic tests. There was a lot there," Bruce's face was serious; if any of the officers watching knew anything of Bruce Wayne, they would be confused to see him so serious, completely lacking the carefree nonchalance his public persona usually gave off. The officers, most of whom knew a bit about Clark Kent, were already suspicious enough of just him, as he hadn't stuttered or tripped over a thing.

"And?"

"Basic genetics tests. The Boss had confirming genetic proof there that only half of Jason's DNA was terrestrial—still human, the right number of chromosomes and all that, but different."

"Kryptonian," Clark nodded, waiting for more.

"The tests were run against the other kids. I don't know what he was setting the baseline for, but it's extensive. And it's all backed up—there's the samples, and the paperwork. It doesn't look like many computers were used, which is lucky for you. It looked mostly like he was gathering proof that Jason is Superman's son."

"And you're sure Luthor wasn't involved at all?"

"Not that I could tell."

"It seems like something he would do, though."

"There _are_ those that don't like that you're from a different planet. They have a whole thing set up online keeping track of your movements, suggesting ways to do you in."

"That should be illegal," Clark said, running a hand through his hair.

"Problem is that it's not," Bruce agreed, handing him a manila folder. "They're mostly bark, no bite. People who lost cats because you didn't get to their house fire fast enough, people who lost family while you were away. Then there're the real nuts, the ones who just don't like you because they need something to do. And then there's the real dangerous ones—the racists."

Clark raised a skeptical eyebrow, but Bruce just shrugged.

"At the base of things, that's what it is," he tapped the folder. "Like I said, most of them are just talk, but a few of them are serious. There's a list of the usernames in there that I would watch out for, and the websites if you want to have a look. I only just came upon this stuff in my research into the Boss for you."

"He's involved in this site?"

"A couple of them, but not directly," Bruce nodded. "From what little I was able to dig up and what we can surmise from what I found at that warehouse he burned out yesterday night, he's a scientist, or was a scientist, or a doctor. He came out of nowhere, but he's everywhere now. He doesn't have a screenname himself that I can find, but 'the Boss' is mentioned all over the place, in chat rooms and forums. I wasn't able to visit even half of them and he dominated.

"They're obsessed with him, with the ideas that he's, apparently, spread to them offline. He's hell-bent on bringing you down simply because he thinks you have an unfair advantage and he doesn't like the idea of you spreading your seed."

"My seed."

"Yeah," Bruce shook his head. "He's also a scientist, though. He wants to know what a Krypton-Earth hybrid would look like, the traits he'd have."

"He wants to study Jason."

"Yeah. And he got the funding to do it about a year back, when kids started disappearing."

"I owe you one for this, Bruce."

"You can help me clear the GCPD of crooked cops when this is all settled, then."

"Consider it done."

They shook and Bruce got back in his helicopter to return to the Cave and continue looking through the things he'd pulled out of the U-Haul.

- - -

Jimmy saw it first as the taxi passed over the section of highway marked on the slip of paper they'd found between the cards. The sun was rising, revealing the world in a splash of blessed daylight, yet still marking it with long shadows and a bit of fog. It was a clear winter day, the sky cold and gray overhead, the air cold, but there was no wind and no clouds.

_Maybe Superman will be able to sit out in the sunlight and get better_, Jimmy thought as the taxi made its way down, if reluctantly, to the back road that ran beneath the overpass.

The U-Haul was parked at the base of one of the support pillars, out of sight for any who wasn't looking for it. Those early-morning commuters that were already on the road weren't looking for anything except, perhaps, another cup of coffee.

The taxi pulled up facing the U-Haul just as an unmarked white panel van pulled up behind the U-Haul. The men who got out of it were dressed in black and carried guns at their waists. They looked suspiciously at the taxi as they opened up their van. There were three of them, one whose bald head gleamed in the morning sun.

"That's Lex Luthor," Jimmy breathed.

"Shit," the cabby said, glaring at them in the rear-view mirror. "You guys so totally owe me extra for this."

Gil hurriedly dialed 911, glancing over at Jimmy worriedly and ignoring the young cab driver completely.

* * *

_A/N: It's almost Monday, right? Close enough, I'd say._

_ Anyway, there's a few more pieces to the puzzle; I hope you're still enjoying putting them all together. The picture should be getting clearer and cleared in these and the next few chapters. I feel I should warn you that nobody is safe..._

_The next update will be awhile coming: I'll be camping 'til next Monday, and I move back to school Tuesday afternoon, then begins marching band shortly followed by classes and all that jazz. Luckily, with this being the section I've mostly had written from the beginning, I should be able to update the moment I have internet access on my laptop (that being when I get on-campus). Tentatively, I'll say you can expect an update next Tuesday evening._


	52. Chapter 52

Clark became immediately aware that his problems had gotten worse when he made it down to the hall outside room 318.

"What happened?" he asked, bursting into the room, his voice calling the room to attention at once. Ron was at Lucy's side trying to soothe her as the doctor that had drawn her blood earlier inspected her. She had bruises up the one side of her face and was holding onto her right arm tenderly.

Lucy was on Lois's bed and there was no sign of Lois.

"All you extra people need to get _out_ of here," the doctor ordered with a look that left no room for argument.

Henderson herded the police personnel out and the Lanes as well, gathering them together in the hall and fixing them with a serious look. "Stay here," he was looking mostly at Clark but the words were for everybody.

An apprehensive moment later, Henderson returned.

"Two of my men are dead," he explained, shaking his head and looking at the room across the hall into which, Clark assumed, the bodies had been removed. "According to Mrs. Troupe, men in black came in and forced Lois out at gunpoint after shooting the officers I left at the door," he looked them all in the eyes before ending with Clark; "On the Boss's orders."

"Damn," Clark said under his breath, but everybody heard him.

"Exactly," Henderson gave him a look. Clark looked down at the folder in his hands, tapping it idly on his free hand while he thought. Whatever the chief was going to say next was interrupted by his cell phone ringing urgently. He excused himself, leaving the small clump of officers and reporters and worried parents standing together awkwardly, most of them staring at Clark as he looked at the folder in his hands.

Bruce had been being kind when he'd referred to it as racist; somebody with the same information who wasn't his friend could've said speciesist. He well knew that he was utterly alien in the minds of most of the world; the flying man from a different planet. Most of them didn't seem to mind, really. Particularly not those who he helped day in and day out, at the sacrifice of his own personal life. Genetically, Kryptonians were as human as any Earth-dwellers. That sort of information hadn't made it into those initial articles Lois had written, though.

"Kent," Henderson barked from the side room he'd disappeared into, successfully distracting Clark and motioning for the reporter to join him inside. Clark did so. "We have another problem," he said, setting his phone down on the bed tray. The room was empty but for them and mostly dark. Clark waited to hear what the chief would say.

"There was just a firefight under an overpass coming into Metropolis from Gotham. We found that fourth U-Haul," he sighed heavily. Clark wondered how long it had been since the chief had slept. "Gil O'Patrick was shot in the leg; he's en route here right now. Jimmy Olson was also present, but he was taken away in an unmarked white van that the U-Haul was transferring its cargo to."

"What was the cargo?"

"Kids."

"Shit."

"Yeah. They didn't get all the kids, though—your _Planet_ guys called us in time and interrupted the thugs before they could get everything. One of the kids and the cab driver died, O'Patrick was shot, but nobody else was hurt so far as I've heard. Most of the kids were left behind with the U-Haul when the van peeled out with Olson."

"Jason?"

"I'm sorry. He was in the van."

Clark swore in Kryptonian, feeling that it better got the emotion across. Henderson waited out the moment before he continued.

"Lex Luthor was driving the unmarked van, according to my information."

Clark swore again slightly more extensively.

"I have no idea what you just said, but I think I agree," Henderson said darkly. "Please tell me you have something in that envelope that's good news."

"I have something useful, but not good news," Clark said, handing the folder over. "I've got to go. I have an idea."

"Kent—" but Clark was already gone, brushing past Lois's family and the officers waiting for a plan of action and heading for the stairwell. He wished desperately that he could spin into his primary colored suit and take off into the sky, but, as it was, he jogged down the stairs and out of the hospital, heading for the library. He was the first one in after they opened the doors for the day.

- - -

Lois was half relieved when she found herself snatched again. The men in black had cuffed her and put a black bag over her head before half leading half dragging her out of the hospital. Lucy's screams faded into the sounds of the stairwell, then the sound of the street. An awkward shift later she was in the back of a van or truck and moving to a destination unknown.

A lifetime later, she found herself walking again, then the blindfold was removed. She blinked a few times for her adjust, but it didn't take long because the room was so dark. It was large and mostly empty, very cold, pools of black water on the floor. Thin poles supporting the ceiling were evenly spaced throughout the room. There was no light, but there were little distorted glass block windows at the top rim of the room, suggesting they were underground in some sort of basement, maybe a cellar.

One of Lois's wrists was uncuffed for a brief moment, then recuffed so that she was attached to one of the poles. She wanted to shout and rage at the men like she had before, but they still had her at gunpoint and she didn't dare.

She shivered—it was wet, and freezing cold. The pools of dark water on the floor had frozen over around the edges. When the light flashed just right—most of the bulbs in the ceiling lights were dull and blinking—Lois could imagine that they were pools of blood. She closed her eyes, forcing the thoughts away.

The heavy door slammed shut behind the thugs with guns, leaving Lois to look around her new prison. Perry appeared in the far corner, making his way slowly across the room to stand beside her pole.

"Well this is fun," Perry sighed, his voice a bit hoarse, examining her carefully. She had a few bandages on her forearms but nothing else.

"C'mon, Chief. You know you missed chasing down a story the old-fashioned way," Lois said, trying to lighten his mood at the look he gave her. He just shrugged.

"Those guys kidnapped the entire bullpen. That's not the old-fashioned way. That's a whole new kind of asshole."

"They have Jason, too," Lois said, unable to mask the quake in her voice. Perry put an awkwardly comforting hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently but tightening his grip when the door creaked open again.

The lock noisily slid out of place and the door swung inwards on creaking hinges. Jimmy and two thugs appeared in the doorway, the thugs shoving him in, hands cuffed in front of him with plastic ties like Perry's. He landed on the floor, hands barely making it forward in time to keep himself from landing on his face. He didn't get up.

"Jimmy?" Lois asked, biting her lip. Jimmy groaned softly. The pair standing by the pole slumped a little in relief, the chief limping over to help Jimmy roll over. "Thank God," Lois sighed under her breath—at least he wasn't dead. "Jimmy, are you okay?"

"I'm just great," Jimmy said, slowly rolling over onto his back. His face was a bloody mess, his nose crooked. There was a small scrape below his right eye, but most of the blood seemed to have come out of his nose. He lay in the puddle where he'd landed, breathing. The chief crouched next to him with a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't rush the photographer to his feet.

"Oh, Jimmy," Lois breathed. She hadn't seen him beat up so bad since before Clark left. He'd taken a picture of a little girl sitting on a bench, intending for it to be part of a 'Scenes from Metropolis' spread. Little did he know the little girl was the daughter of a known drug dealer, whose profile was in the picture as he watched his daughter and her mother sharing ice creams on the bench, and the bench was outside his hideout. The picture had led to the capture of the dealer, his daughter put in foster care, his girlfriend in treatment. After it was published the police made quick work of the arrest, the dealer's buddies made quick work of tracking Jimmy down…

It took awhile, but Jimmy finally made it to his feet. He stood unsteadily in the puddle, his shoes soaking up the water for a moment before he stumbled forward to lean against Lois' pole, ignoring the searing cold. Perry was at his shoulder steadying him.

"What's been going on?" Lois asked, refocusing on Jimmy. He had sunk to the ground, leaning back against the wall closest to her pole, slightly to one side so he could see all of them if he chose to open his eyes.

"Don' really know," Jimmy breathed, leaning over so that his head was between his knees, blood dripping from his face and nose onto the ground and making a tiny puddle of its own. "Gil got shot."

"_What_?" Lois and Perry asked at the same time.

"After the bullpen disappeared, Clark kinda took over. The police showed up bu' dey let him do his own thing, lookin' for everybody. He was da one who figured ou' you wen' missing at different times," he stopped to bleed for a moment, wiping gingerly at his nose and sitting up to look at them after. "He sent me an' Gil out to Gotham to meet with a source. We thought he just didn' want us underfoot or something, but the source played out."

"And?" Perry asked, standing a step between Lois's pole and where Jimmy sat.

"You guys were split up into four vans. Batman got two of them in Gotham—I'd thought you were in one of doze, Miss Lane…"

"I was," she shook her head. "Keep going, I'll tell you in a minute."

"Right," he fingered his nose carefully again. The bleeding had stopped but it was certainly tender. The overall effect was that he had gotten a piece of raw meat thrown at him and it had stuck just above his upper lip. "One of dem dey were tracking as it came into Metropolis, the other one disappeared. The guy Clark sent us to in Gotham had the location for da other truck."

"It's a miracle his guys stuck with him through that absence," Lois muttered under her breath. She found that she moved through informants rather swiftly in some cases, couldn't _imagine_ what the difference between her and Clark was that would provide for such a discrepancy.

"There were a bunch of kids in it, including Jason," Lois perked up, but the look on Jimmy's face didn't give her much hope. "Our cabby got the hell out after Gil called the cops, left us standing behind one of the highway supports with a couple of thugs coming to figure out why the cab was there in the first place.

"Then Luthor gets out of the unmarked van. Yeah, Luthor."

"But he's not the Boss," Losi said, feeling her knees quaking a bit.

"The way he was talking when he was there it seemed like he might've been the Boss's boss."

"He's the one that masterminded whatever the plan was with the bullpen," Perry said. "He was the one that escorted me to this… lovely facility."

Lois slumped against the pole; "I really hate that man."

Jimmy nodded his agreement, leaving his nose alone for once and moving on to his bruised cheek. "The guys were dragging us out toward the U-Haul when the cops showed up. They got Jason into the van, started shooting. I went to grab Jason, they grabbed me and stuffed me in the van too. Gil got shot in the crossfire, I saw, but it didn't look bad," he shrugged weakly. "They slammed the door on the van and started driving. There were a few more shots, then I passed out for a little while."

"Was Jason okay? Did he look okay?"

"He looked fine," Jimmy said, but it didn't give her much reassurance in his expressions.

"Any word on Superman?" Perry asked, looking almost hopeful.

"Nobody's seen him," Jimmy said, glancing at Lois. She could only shrug, thinking of Clark's pale, drawn face when last she'd seen him, and the hoarse quality of his voice.

- - -

Clark wondered idly if it was wrong to be proud of himself for managing to get caught by the people who were out to make his life hell.

He'd used the free internet access at the library to post on a few of the anti-Superman, anti-alien websites. After refreshing the page every few moments to be sure that his antagonistic posts were riling the regulars of the sites, he entered a chat room to discuss his position with 'the opposition.' It took only a few moments for ckthe_planet to become the most hated persons on the planet, right up there with Superman and Lois Lane themselves, so far as the regulars were concerned.

Clark defended his position honestly for awhile, his stomach churning over more than a few comments. In all his life, in all his travels, he'd never encountered such ignorant, blind hatred directed toward himself or others. He'd never imagined any average person, not criminals such as Lex Luthor whose 'careers' were jeopardized by Superman's actions, would want Superman dead on principle. He'd never once considered that anybody would want a little boy eradicated—though some felt he should be studied before he was killed, for the sake of science—for the fact that his father was from a different planet. Of course, nobody on the site knew the discussion of children was anything other than hypothetical, which was only slightly comforting.

When he felt he was truly going to be sick on the library floor, Clark warned—threatened—the users in the chat room that he knew where the Boss was hiding and he was going to call the police and bring them down on the hideout in force.

That wasn't necessarily true.

He had a vague notion of where they had disappeared based on where they _weren't. _

He also knew that, after that last post, somebody who had a way to contact the Boss, would, and they'd be on the lookout for him (and the police, who he would not be bringing just yet—the information he'd given Henderson and the information they were sure to come up with themselves would hopefully lead them to wherever he would be taken upon his capture, or, if they were lucky, wherever the _Daily Planet_ staff had been stashed.)

Clark took a taxi to the section of warehouses where Juliana had been found so many months ago. All the clues pointed to one of the many unused warehouses or closed-down businesses near the harbor, convenient enough for dumping bodies without attracting a good deal of notice.

There was no telling if he was correct in his assumption—the group of thugs that came at him with guns and a black bag for his head shoved him into a vehicle of some sort. He could tell they were moving, but not where they were going. The ride wasn't particularly long, but it wasn't particularly short, either.

- - -

Lucy was sobbing with relief when she was allowed to go downstairs to her daughters' room. The pair of them were sharing the space with four other kids, all looking very much the worse for wear. In comparison to the other kids, the twins looked wonderful. That only made Lucy cry harder, though.

Tearful hugs were exchanged and Lucy and Ron sat between the beds, refusing to move, sticking close. Doctors were in and out, mostly leaving the Troupes alone—the other children had been missing longer, some of them, apparently, had lived on the streets before their kidnapping; they required a lot of attention. Mostly, they sat quietly with their IVs in their arms and looked around for where the next blow was going to come from. It made Lucy's heart hurt to see them like that.

"Where's Jason?" Ron asked after a moment. "Didn't they find Jason?"

"He was the only one Luthor got away with," Henderson said; he was standing near the door, just within earshot, waiting for the doctor making the round of the room to bring back the names of the kids.

"Oh, God," Lucy sighed, her voice wavering again. She held her nearest daughter closer, meeting Ron's eyes worriedly.

_

* * *

_

_A/N: The next chapter will be posted Tuesday evening. Please review!!!_


	53. Chapter 53

"If you want something done right, always do it yourself; ever heard that, kid?" Luthor asked, looking down at Jason, securely strapped to a hospital-style cot in a cold room. Jason didn't respond, eyes shining with fear. Luthor didn't seem to mind that the conversation was one-sided, though. "It was one of the things my father taught me; he taught me a lot of things. Has your father taught you anything? … No, I suppose he hasn't—always busy flying around in tights. Pity. Lucky for us, he doesn't have to have taught you anything to make you useful," he smirked almost benignly. Jason shuddered.

"You're a bad man."

"Yes, some people seem to think so. They just don't get it," he sighed theatrically. "Anyway—this is an example of something else I just had to do myself," his tone turned cutting and he looked up at somebody Jason couldn't see—the Boss, standing across the room, his khaki suit making him more visible in the shadows than he would've been otherwise. "I had people, _smart_ people, I was told, assured, who were going to take care of you for me. Who were going to give you the tests you needed to take for me so that you and I wouldn't have to have this stressful meeting. But they couldn't handle it," he was glaring across the room now at the Boss, looking murderous.

The nurse the Boss had brought with him from Gotham, where he'd hired her, was looking at him, startled, trying to figure out just who was in charge of the situation. She was used to the Boss being in control—he was a lunatic, surely, belonged in Arkham like most of the overlords of Gotham's criminal underground, but he had that charismatic _thing_ that put him in charge unquestionably. In her eyes, Luthor had that _thing_ as well, but his eyes were cool and calculating, not crazy like the Boss's. The sense of it made her skin crawl.

Luthor smiled once more down at Jason before stepping away, focusing on the Boss entirely. "Now, Mr. Boss; I believe you managed to find me another reporter to put on ice. Miss Lane's partner in crime?"

"Yes, sir," the Boss said with his usual confidence, as though Luthor hadn't been threatening him by way of conversation with Jason for the past half an hour. "Clark Kent."

Jason began struggling again on the table, drawing Luthor's attention again. The bald man smirked down at the boy.

"You're used to being stronger than this, aren't you?" he clucked. "Pity for you, though. The fool across the room managed to get a few things right, including the research I ordered performed. We didn't want you throwing any more pianos around, now did we?" he chuckled at his own flippancy. "You remember your trouble breathing, the early Christmas present from me, when your mother was out at that Gala?" Jason's eyes were wider, panicked, remembering not being able to breath, remembering that only his dad had been able to make him better, taking him to the Fortress for the special light treatment. "Don't worry, we won't overdose you again. Mr. Boss here would hate that. You're the most fascinating thing he's seen in years."

If Jason could see the Boss in that moment, it would've easily doubled his terror—the gleam in the man's eyes was maniacal clothed in the professional exterior and cunning of him.

"Doctor, go ahead and begin again with him," Luthor said, directing the woman the Boss had brought from Gotham to Jason's side. "Mr. Boss; I don't believe I've been introduced to Mr. Kent yet."

- - -

"I'm pretty sure we're in Metropolis," Jimmy said after some time had passed. "I was a little dazed when they threw me into the van, but it seemed like we were heading into the city, not out of it."

"It wasn't that long of a drive from the hospital to wherever here is," Lois said. Once she'd settled down a bit, she'd been able to rationalize things; her time in transport hadn't been that long, even though, with the bag over her head, it had seemed endless.

Time passed. And then some more.

The sun rose, shining in through the windows that were high up along the top of the walls. Half the windows were boarded up and the rest were made of the thick, distorted blocks of glass; not much heat made it in, though there was a nice glare reflecting off a puddle into Lois's eyes.

Jimmy had settled against the side wall, resting his head against the cold brick—he was either asleep or unconscious, Lois couldn't tell. She had sunk down to sit at the base of her pole, her shoulders beginning to let her know how much they disliked her position with her wrists so close to the pole by aching dully. She hardly noticed it on top of all her other aches and pains.

"What was that?" Lois asked, perking up.

"What?" Perry looked around as though the sound might've come from inside their prison.

Something slammed heavily against the door. They couldn't hear very well through the thickness of it, but it sounded like a person had been pushed into the door and there was a muffled grunt to go with it.

Shouts and barked commands soon followed.

Then stillness.

Jimmy was awake, sitting slightly forward and listening.

The lock jerked back and the door squeaked open, revealing four big thugs; two holding onto Clark's shoulders, their knuckles white they were holding so tight, the other two with handguns trained on his chest.

Clark had a small trickle of blood coming out of the corner of his mouth but he didn't seem to notice. His hair was everywhere, matted down in places by sweat, sticking up at crazy angles in other places. His glasses were askew on his nose but still concealing his identity, to Lois's relief. He was wearing the same jeans, sneakers, and plain white, though now very dirty, t-shirt he'd been wearing when he'd sent Jimmy to Gotham, when he'd seen Lois at the hospital. His hands were cuffed behind his back. He was marked by fresh purple bruises up and down his arms. He looked like he had the stomach flu and hadn't slept in a month.

Lois hated seeing him like that. It was better than when he'd been lying, comatose and perfect, in the hospital bed, but he was _Clark_. He wasn't supposed to get hurt.

"You're more trouble than you're worth," one of the thugs with a gun sneered, stepping closer and putting the gun in Clark's face, his finger twitching eagerly, his eyes darting to the leader and back to Clark, almost asking permission. "We should just kill you now."

"Back up, you idiot!" The leader barked, but not soon enough. Clark's foot came up and got the man in the jewels as he threw himself to one side, into one of his captors.

The gun went off as the man went down to his knees. The shot narrowly missed the leader's head as he jerked away, letting go of Clark's arm in the process. Clark threw his weight into the fall, crashing hard into the thug who'd been holding his arm. He heard a rib crack beneath his elbow.

Clark recovered quickly, getting to his feet and going for the second man with a gun. He kicked the gun from the first gunman's hand in Lois's direction, but he hadn't aimed as well as would've been preferable and the gun skittered off into the corner. The man he was approaching twitched—he didn't want to shoot.

Clark didn't hesitate, using his feet as his arms were cuffed firmly behind his back. The kryptonite, though exposure had been almost twenty-four hours ago, was still affecting him. He wasn't invulnerable. He couldn't fly. He couldn't hear anything beyond the normal human range. No freezing 'super' breath. He didn't have telescopic or microscopic vision. He had a very slight amount of his usual strength and speed, though just enough to be an admirably strong and quick man; nothing super-human. His x-ray vision, of all things, had come back first—and it was a good thing, too, or he'd have trouble seeing with the prescription glasses—and he had a small manner of heat vision, though nothing to brag about.

He couldn't break out of the cuffs, but he could certainly use his feet. He'd never been more thankful of the time he'd spent with the League of Shadows.

He kicked the second gunner's gun out of his hands, knocking him to the floor with a kick in the chest, before the leader tackled him from behind. Clark went down, twisting to that he landed on his shoulder instead of his face. The leader was standing over him, kicking him hard in the ribs. Clark ignored the pain, refusing to cry out, striking out with his leg and knocking the man to the floor.

He leapt to his feet as the second gunner recovered, retrieving his gun, and training it on Clark's chest again. "Don't move!" He ordered, preparing to fire.

Clark took a step toward the man with the gun, his eyes furiously dark. He could feel his own presence, even without the Kryptonian aura. He was a tall guy with plenty of muscles and in the past four hours he had certainly proved he knew how to use it. It didn't matter that the other man was holding the gun, Clark was in charge.

"Don't move," the leader instructed and something in his voice told Clark to look. The leader was just standing there, bruised and bloodied, cradling one arm close to his chest, but he was looking over at Lois. Clark followed the eye line and found that the first gunman had retrieved his gun and had the barrel pressed to Lois's temple.

"Don't move," the second gunman repeated. Clark visibly shrunk. He seemed two inches shorter, his shoulders not as broad, his muscles not as big and threatening, eyes focused on the gun pointed at Lois and nothing else. The second gunman smirked before kneeing Clark hard in the gut.

Clark went down, winded.

The first gunman hit Lois with the butt of his gun and she crumpled against her pole. The thugs quickly cleared out, muttering to each other about it not being worth their salaries, and something about how the Boss was going to kill them before the door was bolted shut behind them.

Clark rolled over; out of the puddle he'd landed in and onto his back. He struggled for breath for a moment before he began working to get his hands in front of him. His wrists were bright red and slightly puffy, the metal having cut deeply into his skin. He hurt everywhere. His gut, his lungs, his wrists, his shoulders, his knees, his feet. Then there was the kryptonite headache that had yet to fade, the slightly nauseous-burning-sea-sick feeling at the base of his esophagus that wasn't here nor there.

There was a heavy silence in the room as the men watched Clark slowly roll onto his hands and knees before pushing himself to his feet. He made his way to Lois's pole and checked the back of her head where she'd been hit. It wasn't bad. She'd have a nice lump, but she would recover. He checked her pulse, more because he wanted to touch her than because he was worried about her heart rate.

"She okay?" Perry asked, standing just behind Clark and looking over his shoulder.

"She'll have a helluva lump but she'll be fine," Clark said, keeping his voice high like he usually used in the office but not daring to stutter—that would raise even more suspicion, no doubt.

"And yourself?" Perry prompted, looking Clark over carefully.

"I've been worse, Chief," he admitted, remembering the stab wound from Luthor, the kryptonite poisoning he'd experienced on his trip to Krypton. Perry didn't look like he believed it, but he didn't say anything.

"What happened?" Jimmy asked, leaning heavily against the wall. Clark lay Lois on the floor so that her arm cushioned her head and moved toward Jimmy.

"I had no way to find you, so I figured I'd antagonize them a bit, get captured," he said, looking closely at Jimmy's nose. "This is going to hurt."

"What's— AH!" Jimmy cried out when Clark quickly realigned the cartilage in his nose with an audible snap. "Di' ya jus' break m'knose again?" He leaned forward, lower back still braced against the wall, pinching his nose warily and bleeding onto the floor instead of down his front.

"Re-aligned it," Clark explained.

"Ow."

"Sorry."

"You got captured on purpose?" Perry asked incredulously, leaning toward Lois to get a look at the lump on her head.

"I couldn't find you any other way—we've been looking for two, almost three days," he sighed, gingerly taking a seat beside Jimmy. "I'm fairly certain I know where we are, too; not that it does us any good," he smiled humorlessly. "If we're where I think we are, we're in Metropolis, in a warehouse just upstream from where the bodies have been washing up. One of the warehouses Henderson looked into was a smaller, privately owned warehouse that was refrigerated, belonged to a meat shop that went out of business last year. Not that things would be much warmer in a regular cellar, with the weather we've got going."

"Luthor's in charge of this party, then?" Lois asked, startling them all. She gave Clark a look when he seemed about to get up to help her; he let her move into a sitting position on her own.

"He's funding it; the Boss—Luthor call's him Mr. Boss, I don't know if he's just making fun of him or if that's his name, though—is a doctor of some sort, he hired the people to do the… tests."

"Is Jason okay? Have you seen Jason? Did you find him?"

"I saw him," Clark said, not able to meet her eyes. He'd held Jason's hand as a nurse had done a biopsy of his bone marrow, drilling into his hip before inserting a long, evil-looking needle. Clark could remember needles like those from his nightmares as a child, when his powers had begun to manifest and he'd been paranoid to the point of never leaving his parents' land if he could help it, thinking men with angry eyebrows and long white coats would be waiting with needles and any manner of other horrible evils.

Clark had been relieved to see that, at the very least, everything was sterile and clean. There had been no anesthesia provided—though he suspected Luthor and the Boss knew full well that Jason wouldn't be predictably affected by drugs measured out for normal human use— but steps had been taken to prevent infection. Clark didn't want to think about _why_ these people wanted to keep Jason healthy and alive for now, just glad that they were.

Jason's screams of pain echoed in Clark's head as he sat in the cold, wet room, wondering what he was missing now. They'd let him be with Jason to mock him, taunted the both of them about not really being family, about Clark standing in for Superman just like Richard had, about Superman being a coward, a filthy alien, off somewhere, probably dead from the kryptonite trap earlier that he'd been too stupid to avoid.

If it would've prevented Jason's suffering, Clark would've revealed himself in an instant without a single regret. But it wouldn't have helped. They both would've been caged and studied like lab rats. There would be even less hope for escape.

Then there was the matter of _proving _he was Superman. It would've been difficult, what with the way he bled when they carted him from the lab and he'd resisted. He knew he would be a massive walking bruise in a few hours, and he'd broken at least four ribs. His lungs still didn't function properly from the kryptonite-laced smoke he'd inhaled earlier. He'd broken two toes on his left foot; each step _ached_, each kick sent a new jolt of pain up his leg.

At his continued bleak expression, Lois broke into heaving sobs, collapsing forward against her pole. Clark moved to her side stiffly but quickly, wondering if he should try to keep moving to keep things from seizing up on the off chance that he'd be able to punch his way out of the room with his already battered knuckles. He held her but was unable to come up with properly soothing words.

"It looks like they've lost a good deal of support," he said when her sobs had quieted, though her tears didn't stop flowing. Her fingers were clenched in his t-shirt. "Their thugs have been dropping like flies since the transfer—Gotham to Metropolis. MPD is driving them hard, and Batman in Gotham.

"From what I heard while they were dragging me here, this isn't what they signed up for. It seems most of them were only aware of Luthor or only aware of the Boss; having clashing authorities isn't helping them at all."

"Dat's gud news, I suppose," Jimmy offered. Clark couldn't agree or disagree. It was really just news. They were still locked in a freezing room and Jason was somewhere else, alone, recovering from a very traumatic and invasive surgery. Even if all the goons took off, the doctors were still around. And what would happen if the police got too close?

"So what about Bill Ganelon?" Perry asked, looking between Lois and Clark.

"He was a pawn," Lois said roughly, bitterly.

"He was driving the van they found Lois in. He might've done some recruiting in Metropolis, been the hookup between Metropolis and Gotham with Juliana, but they used him and they let him fall when they were done with him," Clark said, hating the detachment in his own voice. It was a Kryptonian thing, he was fairly sure: detach from the situation in order to analyze it logically and solve it. It didn't sit right with him, though—the fact that he was able to process things while his gut was tying itself in knots over his poor Jason.

"Can't expect much more from these guys," Lois grunted. The others couldn't disagree.

- - -

Slowly, the hours ticked by. Clark sat in the pale patches of sunlight as much as he could, but it was horribly filtered, coming through the thick glass blocks, and the angle was all wrong for any truly worthwhile rays. It was cold and quiet; they couldn't hear anything outside their room, which frustrated Clark more than any of the others as he was used to having such heightened senses.

The final patches of dusty orange-red sunshine faded out of sight, leaving them in all but darkness—the lights hanging overhead flickered occasionally, but never turned on fully. The puddles on the floor frosted over around the edges again and they could see their breath.

Perry paced; Jimmy tried to blow fog rings and failed miserably. Lois shivered, trying to keep her wrists from touching the pole, as the metal was even colder than the ground on which she sat. She was hunched in on herself; very quiet.

"How are you doing?" Clark asked, giving up his semi-warmed spot against the wall where the largest patch of sunset had last been and going to sit next to her, close so that they could exchange body heat.

"Oh, you're so warm," she sighed, trying to scoot closer. Clark couldn't help but smile.

"I think you've told me that before." The corner of Lois' mouth twitched upwards in response, but both nearly-smiles soon faded. She sighed and they both paused to watch her breath curl up and away from them before fading.

"I'm okay. All this cold is acting like a cold compress or something."

"Good," he said, leaning forward a bit so that he could rub her hands and warm them, avoiding the bruises and the chafed spots around her wrists, his own handcuff clinking as he moved.

"I hate this waiting game," she said, furious and frustrated. Clark nodded, feeling similarly. Her anger broke after a moment though and she began shaking again, not shivering as she had been, but trembling with her panic and the sheer exhaustion of the continued heightened emotional state; "He's just a little boy! Why would they do so many evil things to somebody so sweet?" she was crying again, the tears that caught in her eyelashes cooling in the air, crystallizing to look like snow flakes caught in her lashes. "Our little, sweet boy, Clark," she said softly, choking quietly on a sob and biting her lip.

Clark took her face in his hands, brushing the water crystals off of her eyelashes gently and wiping the tear streaks off of her cheeks. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing, hating to break, to lose her composure, trained from an early age to know that emotion didn't accomplish things.

"I don't have an answer for you, sweetheart," Clark said helplessly, shifting again so that he could hold her, nestling her awkwardly but comfortably against his chest while both of her hands rested on his thigh off to one side, still chained around the pole. They both knew that saying 'we'll get him back, don't worry' wouldn't help things—they were both people who hated to be even the slightest bit helpless, yet they were entirely helpless in their situation. "I don't understand it."

_

* * *

_

_A/N: So, it's not Tuesday, but this was finished and I wanted to post it in a pathetic attempt to make up for not managing to post _last_ Tuesday like I said I would. So—_now_ the next chapter will be up on Tuesday. For real._

_:)_


	54. Chapter 54

Henderson watched with little relief as the employees of the _Daily Planet_, just over a dozen of them, made their way out of the apartment complex, some escorted by officers, all of them surrounded by SWAT, headed toward ambulances to be checked out before they were released to their families. There was police tape all over, press and neighbors and family members all crowding as close as the officers running crowd control would let them. Bulbs flashed, stirring a deep annoyance in the pit of the police chief's gut.

The _Planet_ staff had been discovered by the landlord shortly before ten at night; the apartment the staff had been sequestered in had belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Ganelon, though they hadn't occupied it for many months. The landlord had gone into the apartment to have a look at the furniture to estimate how many guys he'd have to hire to have it carted off. It was lucky he was an Army veteran; otherwise, he wouldn't have recognized that the door was wired and the entire block would've been leveled. He'd called the proper authorities; the area had been evacuated and the bomb squad had gone to work—it had been necessary to cut into the apartment from the neighbors' living room into the kitchen.

Hours later, it was well past midnight, the shaking hostages had been cut free of each other and led out of the building. They were all dehydrated, but, as far as Henderson had been informed, mostly unharmed. Officers stood at the backs of the ambulances as the _Planet_ employees were checked out, taking statements. The staffers were distracted, though, looking for their families in the crowd that had rushed in the moment the bomb squad had cleared the area and the evacuation order had ceased.

"The ones who had a view of the kitchen say that Lex Luthor was present, that he took Perry White and left as they were all being wired with the explosives," Detective Garcia said, looking around at the gathered forces stonily.

"So the question becomes: were these two separate events, this abduction and what's playing out with the Boss and the Napper Neighborhood case, or is Luthor working for the Boss?"

"I don't think Lex Luthor works for anybody but himself, Chief," Garcia said. "It's not his style."

"But who can really know, with Luthor? He never had a reason to go after Superman in the first place," Henderson said, thinking of the websites Clark had given him, the mass of people who hated Superman because they needed somebody to hate.

A moment later, Henderson was called out of his musings to join the think-tank of sorts forming between the FBI agents who'd taken over the investigation more than twenty-four hours previously, and Tobias Krenske from missing persons. They'd had a minor victory, but the greater trial wasn't over yet—five people were still missing.

- - -

"How are you feeling?" Lois asked. Many hours had passed—it was completely dark outside their windows but the quality of the air had the feeling of approaching sunrise. Clark could feel it in his blood, though he knew he wouldn't get much good feeling from the rising sun at all.

"Like I was in a grand ol' fight," Clark sighed, shifting on the cold floor to try to find a position that didn't make his feet fall asleep. He was still sitting with Lois by her pole, she practically on his lap with the way their handcuffs had to be accommodated. Perry and Jimmy were both asleep at the base of the inside wall, which was almost warm. Clark could hear them both shivering, though.

"Shouldn't you be getting better by now?" Lois asked, keeping her voice low so that she wouldn't disturb the sleepers and so that they wouldn't overhear if they weren't really asleep. Her head was close enough to his chest that she could hear the struggle of each rattling breath.

"I don't know. Every time I'm exposed it's different," Clark couldn't pretend he wasn't concerned. "There's not much sunlight in here, which hasn't helped, I'm sure."

"You shouldn't have let yourself get caught. You should've sat out in the sunlight until you could crash through the ceiling after spotting us from the clouds," Lois said decisively, frowning.

"I wouldn't have known where to start looking, and there was no telling how long that would take. I'd rather be here, knowing that… at least—you're safe," he said, his voice trailing away. His thoughts went to Jason, to whatever horrors the bastards were playing on him now that he was alone. He wouldn't trade those gruesome moments he'd spent holding his son's hand for a day's worth of sunshine above the clouds. He hated, more than anything, that Jason was alone.

"He's a strong boy," Lois repeated; it had become her mantra after she'd woken from her short, unrefreshing nap.

"Yes, he is."

They sat in silence for a bit longer until a sudden commotion outside their door caught their attention. Perry and Jimmy sat up against their wall stiffly, looking around groggily; exhausted and even more stiff after their naps. Lois and Clark stood, Clark putting himself just slightly in front of Lois and her pole, between her and the doorway.

The door swung open heavily, the hinges squeaking eerily in the cold air. The first thing into the newly opened space was the barrel of a very large gun, pointed directly at Lois's head, ensuring that Clark wouldn't rush the thugs as they entered.

"Mom!" Jason shouted, beginning to struggle fiercely against the rubbery-looking straps that held him in the wheelchair. The big, round-faced man pushing him put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

"Ah, ah, ah," the Boss tsked at Jason, pulling what looked like a partially inflated balloon from his inner coat pocket. Jason continued to struggle, seeming to want to get away from balloon as much as he wanted to get out of the chair and across the room to his mother's side. The Boss fixed him with a look, then squeezed the balloon, sending green powder out of the nozzle into the boy's face—it wasn't a balloon so much as some sort of specialized container.

Jason sneezed violently and began coughing. The coughs subsided into weak, wheezing gasps after a moment. It was a noise familiar to Lois. The rattling in his lungs that had terrified her when he was just two years old, that had eventually triggered a reflex: getting an inhaler into his hands as quickly as possible.

Standing at her pole, Lois's shoulders slumped a little bit more, her handcuffs clanked against the pole as she shifted, unable to go to him, completely without the inhaler she was sure he needed.

"Be still," the Boss instructed coldly. "Don't make me give you another one," he tucked the balloon-contraption back into his coat pocket, patting it in a threatening way to suggest that he had more stashed there. Jason was quiet, letting the round-faced man hold onto him as he focused on breathing.

Clark's eyes roamed over his son. He was in his underwear—boxers, socks and a white undershirt. He had bright blue medical tape around both his elbows, much the way nurses wrapped cotton balls to elbows after a patient gave blood. Besides the restraints around his torso and knees, keeping him in the wheelchair, there was a solid-looking brace keeping his hips still. He was very pale and had dark circles under his eyes, but he didn't look as though he'd been mistreated beyond the medical tests and kryptonite dust, which wasn't saying much.

"Now then," the Boss continued. "We're here for a little entertainment," he looked at Clark, examining him carefully for a moment in silence. More people in black were entering the room. Most of them had guns, pointing them at everybody in the room. Perry and Jimmy were corralled into the back corner and held at gunpoint by three lanky guys with handguns. The man with the long-barreled shotgun circled around, never taking his gun off of Lois, to be standing with his back to Perry and Jimmy, pointing his gun at Lois's back instead. "It seems we've a long-lost friend of yours here, Mr. Kent."

"I can't imagine calling anybody who would associate with you a friend," Clark ground out, glancing around at those in black around the edges of the room. There were the three with handguns in the back corner, the one with the shotgun behind Lois, and four more, two to each side of the door. It wasn't possible that the thug-count had gone down to simply eight in the past few hours, but it was. They had been locked up, unable to witness what was going on, completely cut off. Completely helpless. There was no way to know what, exactly, had been 'going down.'

"Not a friend, then. An acquaintance. An old comrade," the Boss sneered. Clark stood very still, hoping against hope that he was wrong. That it wasn't some straggler from the League of Shadows, drifting from city to city looking for jobs after Ducard's death.

_It couldn't be anything else, though_, Clark thought to himself, resigning himself to the expectation. _An old 'comrade' whose presence would somehow be entertaining when brought into the same room as me… they all hated me for leaving, even though they didn't hear my fight with Ducard in its entirety…_

An Asian man, dressed in black just as all but the Boss were, stepped into the doorway behind the Boss, emerging from the shadows in the way that only those trained to do so could. He was short, his hair kept short and tidy but for a five-o-clock shadow that told of something not going to plan on the Boss's end of things, and had dark, calculating eyes.

"Kent," the newcomer said, the accent and the tenor reaching back into Clark's memory and hooking into his time in Tibet. He was Chen; one of those who had joined the League shortly before Clark, one who he was supposed to have had special camaraderie with but hadn't. They'd disliked him for it, but he hadn't minded. Before Clark had begun looking too deeply into the historical records and before Bruce had arrived at the temple, Clark and Chen had been Ducard's favorites, pitted against each other in training, always competing. A violent, treacherous competition, at least on Chen's part—until Bruce had arrived, then Clark had trained with him instead.

_Couldn't be the same Chen that worked at Jason's school, too, could it?_ he wondered, observing the other man. It was entirely possible, everybody he'd met at the Temple had been a very good liar.

"Chen," Clark couldn't keep the surprise out of his voice. "Fallen in with another regrettable master," he observed, sparing a glance at the Boss—he was looking between the pair of them eagerly, truly looking forward to being entertained at the clash he expected, and would probably get.

_Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit._

"I choose my own master," Chen said defensively. Clark didn't say anything, it was true enough, and he knew better than to think that he could talk some sense into the man about thinking he needed to have a master at all. He'd pledged himself to an order once, it was a way of life he understood, one that he couldn't break free of, it seemed.

_Shit. Shit. _Fuck_ing shit._

"Yes, this will do nicely," the Boss interrupted, grinning at them with a glint in his eye that made Clark highly uncomfortable. "Here's the deal," he motioned to somebody outside the door that Clark couldn't see. "You're going to fight to keep this darling little boy alive," he gripped Jason's face with one hand, squeezing so that his cheeks squished up toward his nose, making his labored breathing sound even more difficult. "And to keep your friends alive as well, if that's not enough incentive."

Clark was silent, still as a statue.

"The terms," the Boss continued. "Your handcuffs come off, you get one of these snazzy swords Chen always has around," the man he'd gestured to outside the doorway entered holding two sabers that could've come out of the League's temple. "Your friends stand in the corner with these guns pointed at them," he took the sabers from the man, holding one in each hand and examining them, though Clark was sure he had no idea how to tell a quality blade from a flimsy thing sold to tourists. The man who'd brought the swords in stepped around Clark to uncuff Lois, the man with the shotgun using the barrel to direct her into the corner with Perry and Jimmy—she only had eyes for Jason, watching his chest rise and fall with more and more confident a rhythm. "If you're still alive after five minutes, one of my gunmen comes to stand by me. After ten minutes, another. After twenty, the third. After half an hour, your friends are safe for the rest of the game.

"Then it gets really fun—you get to play for the boy's life," he smiled down at Jason, drawing the flat of one of the blades across Jason's cheek. "The boy takes his mother's spot at the pole; Chen gets to try to kill him instead.

"Another rule—you are not allowed to kill Chen. Not for the first half an hour, anyway. How else would you defend the boy, after all?" the Boss's lips quirked malevolently to one side, then his face fell to utter seriousness. "You kill him, all of them get a bullet in the brain. Then you, too. Understood?"

"Understood."

Chen grinned at Clark, taking one of the sabers from the Boss—Chen knew very well that Clark refused to take a life.

"Sounds fun, right?" the Boss taunted as the man who'd brought the sabers in took the handcuffs off of his wrists before leaving the room again. Clark didn't answer, rubbing his wrists after the cuffs were gone and resisting the urge to stretch. The Boss gave him the saber and backed off quickly—Clark didn't blame him, glancing over at Lois and testing the balance of the blade. It was a good blade, probably made at the temple in truth.

He turned to face Chen, holding the blade out, prepared, watching. It was odd to face a partner other than Bruce, to know that Chen would be going after his vulnerable spots not to tap him, 'til first blood, but 'til one of them was dead...

Chen had never had any patience; it was really the only thing that could be considered a weakness in his technique. He attacked right away, after circling only a few moments. Chen had obviously been keeping in practice, but so had Clark. The only problem was that Clark's lungs hadn't stopped burning yet, that he was recovering from a heavy dose of kryptonite exposure, that he hadn't had a properly restful episode of sleep in half a week, that he hadn't had food or drink for a day. And he had several broken ribs and toes.

They spun in and out of the poles, keeping away from the edges of the room where the black-clad gunmen stood, away from the corner where the hostages were gathered. The only sounds in the room were the clanging and sliding of metal on metal, Chen's heavy boots and Clark's sneakers against the floor, and the mingling of Clark and Jason's struggling gasps for air.

It seemed they had hardly begun when they reached the five-minute mark. The Boss announced that they had reached it, and one of the gunmen stepped away from the corner to join the others on the wall—watching, ready to bring his gun up and shoot if Clark should break the rules and kill Chen.

Clark felt the ache in his muscles begin as they approached the ten-minute mark. The hours of cold hadn't been a good start. He'd already been stiff when they'd begun—he felt sure he was going to overextend and pull something, but he couldn't let himself worry about it. Chen was making every effort to kill him, putting up an aggressive offense even though he knew Clark wouldn't turn it on him.

Another gunman withdrew to one side at the ten-minute mark. Chen pressed more furiously. Another gunman gone after twenty minutes. Clark was sure his shoulders would kill him before Chen did—his opponent seemed to have decided that he'd enjoy it more if Clark were trying to kill him as well, to wait until the final gunman had withdrawn and Clark was fighting for the boy's life. Or maybe Chen just wanted to kill Jason, who knew? Certainly not Clark.

Finally, _finally_, the final gunman stepped away from the three in the corner. The Boss directed Clark and Chen to separate while the round-faced man cuffed Jason's wheelchair to the pole closest to the door. Lois took a step forward, to go to her son, but the long-barreled shotgun swung around to point at her again and she stepped back, viciously wiping at fresh tears as she glared down the barrel.

Clark took advantage of the reprieve and rested the saber against the nearest wall, stretching and flexing soar, overtaxed muscles, pain roaring at him from broken bones. He could deal with pain, though; the burning in his lungs was nothing compared to the kryptonite poisoning in space when he'd gone looking for Krypton, and he'd had many worse injuries than broken toes or ribs when he'd been training at the temple.

Looking down at the saber, he noted the new pocks and chips on the blade—Chen had been swinging hard, tiring him out, but also himself.

"Why don't you start at that far end of the room," the Boss suggested. Clark and Chen walked to the far end of the room, putting a good deal of space between themselves and Jason, making it more challenging.

Clark looked back at the room at large once more before they began. The Boss stood next to the round-faced man, just inside the door as though he expected to need to make a quick escape and he was taking the round-faced man with him. Lois, Perry, and Jimmy had been shuffled into the corner to the left of the door, the man holding the long-barreled shotgun standing against the left wall nearby. There were five other men holding handguns, a few having left the room after Jason had been cuffed to the pole. They looked mildly entertained, standing there with their weapons held down but ready.

"Begin."

Chen took off toward Jason, which Clark had half expected; he had to run a few steps in order the knock him hard in the back of the head with the grip of his saber. Chen fell to the side, rolling onto his shoulder and back up to his feet—it gave Clark enough time to put himself between Chen and Jason, though.

_

* * *

_

A/N: And there is the scheduled update. Thoughts, comments? This chapter has been included, omitted, rewritten, cut in half, stitched back together, omitted again, made twice as long, cut down to quarter length, omitted, and finally fixed for inclusion again about four times in the last few months and I finally decided just to keep it in. The next chapter is written and uploaded, it will be posted... when there are REVIEWS!! (that's not bribery at all...)

Thanks for reading! :)


	55. Chapter 55

Lois had never seen a _real_ swordfight before. She'd seen fencing during the Olympics— the fine, competitive dance with the added element of gracefully deadly blades. And she'd seen swordfights in movies, with witty digs and conversations, with some badass protagonist throwing a sucker punch to the nose in to end it as a surprise attack.

The fight between Clark and Chen was a _real_ swordfight, though. There was no talking, not exchange of threats other than the swords in their hands. Punches and kicks seemed to be the par for the course, expected instead of a surprise attack to be held in reserve. They used their whole bodies, not only the swords. They hit and kicked and elbowed, swung their swords and challenged footing; they used the poles as weapons, moving to force the other to run into them.

It was a bloody struggle, though neither seemed to realize they were bleeding.

The swords, sabers, weren't even what she'd expected. The ones she'd seen Clark and Bruce Wayne use for what she could now think of only as friendly dueling had been shiny and new-looking, gleaming in the well-lit gym. The sabers the Boss had provided were worn from use and getting worse by the second. The leather grips were frayed to begin with, the blades not quite so even or shiny. As the duel continued, Lois noted divots and pocks cracking into the metal upon particularly harsh strikes, and blood catching and dripping along the blades when a blow landed home. There was nothing clean, crisp, or elegant, nothing dance-like in the movements. There was grace, certainly, but it was the sort of grace two people who know how to use their bodies to kill had, not a dancer's grace. It was like a wrestling match, like one of those professional fights on TV, not the flamboyant staged matches but the newer ones, the kind with the reality series being made about them, only with the added threat of long, sharp, double-edged blades.

The men broke apart, Clark still between Chen and Jason. They were partially crouched, eyes never leaving each other, watching shoulders, feet, eyes, looking for any sort of tell. Lois wondered if they had really known each other, 'comrades' the Boss had said, before, trained together. Clark had never told her _where_ he'd learned the karate-ninja stuff.

Lois glanced beyond the two breathing at the center of the room. The Boss stood with the round-faced man and the few remaining thugs, all holding their guns at their sides. Idly, she wondered if it mattered who won. Something, some upset, had obviously occurred outside their prison walls; even a victory for Clark against Chen didn't guarantee Jason's safety. There was a manic gleam beneath the Boss's madness that hadn't been there before.

Jason was sitting very still in the wheelchair, seeming to focus on breathing. There were tears on his cheeks, but she couldn't tell if he was actively crying—he was watching the two men unerringly, though. She could see him shaking as he sat there. She wanted nothing more than to cross the room and take him in her arms, but the men with guns were still in the doorway. Any move on her part would be more likely to get her or Clark or both of them or Jason or all of them shot. There was no telling.

Chen charged Clark again and Jason flinched violently, pinching his eyes shut and looking away. Lois heard herself whimper but couldn't bring herself to care. Clark's breath was coming in too-audible gasps; she suspected it was there was more wrong in his chest cavity than just kryptonite inhalation.

Clark countered the attack, throwing his shoulder into Chen's chest as he followed through, twisting around so that Chen was awkwardly braced with his chest across Clark's shoulders, both his hands still holding the saber, trapped by Clark's arms. Clark launched Chen over himself, then, and the other man landed with a hard thud and a crack, the wind rushing out of him.

His left wrist was at an odd angle, the saber held awkwardly in just one hand as the man tried to regain his breath and blink away the pain.

"Concede," Clark ordered, his deep, exhausted voice booming, echoing off the frosty walls. His saber was at Chen's throat. There was, for a moment, stillness but for Chen's labored breathing. Jason didn't look up. "Concede!"

"That's not the way it works, Kent," the Boss said from the doorway, smiling that evil, suave smile.

Lois felt a scream beginning deep in the roots of herself. The Boss simply wanted Jason to see his father take a life. See Superman take a life. There was no telling what the Boss actually knew, what he thought he knew, and what was just pure sadism.

The rage was cut off by surprise when the percussive racket of machine-gun fire burst out, and the Boss and those next to him in the doorway were suddenly on the floor. They weren't moving. Lex Luthor walked through the door then, stepping pointedly on the Boss' hand—Lois heard the bones in his hand crack all the way across the room—before he turned back let off a stream of bullets into the Boss's head and chest. The sound reverberated painfully around the frigid room.

The thugs inside the room were still. Luthor observed them for a moment, then looked down his nose at the Boss's prone form before shooting him thrice in the most tender of places.

"You don't fuck with me," Luthor told the bloody pulp. The blood had soaked into the Boss's beige suit, making every bit of him that Lois could see a mess of red tatters. Tattered flesh, torn apart by bullets… tattered clothes, stained with blood.

She'd never had trouble with nightmares, but Lois suspected she would in the near future.

Luthor looked around the room, turning in a circle so that he could make sure there was nobody behind him. The thugs remained frozen, gaping, waiting for instruction. Lois noted that the back of the bald man's head looked as though it had been scraped fairly hard across a rough surface. Lois looked closer at his dark clothing, squinting in the poor lighting. Patches of his clothes were shiny; they could've been smeared with blood. And they weren't in the pristine condition in which Luthor usually preferred to appear, but rumpled, torn.

Lois was startled from her musings when a whir of gunfire rocketed across the room again. Instinctively, Lois dropped to the ground. At some point, she'd gotten a solid grip—there would be punctures in his skin from her fingernails—on Jimmy's arm, and she pulled him with her. The thugs were all too slow, not expecting danger to themselves. They dropped heavily, though they weren't immediately unconscious or dead as most Bad Guys were in movies—they made their own wet, breathy noises, moaned, shrieked, cried. Luthor shot the louder ones again—in the head so that they would die and stop sniveling.

"Fucking traitors," Luthor said, holding the gun up so that it was perpendicular to the floor and looking, a bit blearily so far as Lois could tell, around the room. His eyes settled on Chen, who still had Clark's sword at his throat. Luthor sneered and trained the gun at him, opening fire almost before Clark had a chance to throw himself out of the way, dropping his sword in the process. Luthor held the gun up again, once again looking over the room in a lazy, mad gaze. "Inept fu—!"

Clark barreled into Luthor at full tilt, or what she presumed was full tilt at the moment. The gun let off another burst of bullets. The two of them disappeared from sight beyond the doorway. The gun went off again, but nobody shouted in pain and it sounded like the bullets ricocheted in the hall. Lois bolted to Jason's side, adrenalin pounding through her veins, keeping her ears open for any sounds from beyond the door, but her main focus was on Jason.

Jason was crying openly. The restraints were pressing tight against his legs and arms, surely cutting off circulation. The struggle continued beyond the doorway.

"Are you okay? Where are you hurt?" she kept asking him, but he didn't seem able to answer.

Once she got him free of the restraints, he threw himself out of the wheelchair and flung his arms around her. She was more than relieved at that. She fell back on her bum, holding him close in her lap and rocking, both of them crying in relief and ever-present terror. There was a sharp pang of pain in her thigh, but she ignored it, trying to soothe Jason.

"Oh my God," Jimmy was saying, panicking. "Perry! Perry! Oh my God!"

There were footsteps in the hall outside, Luthor starting shouting, raving.

"No, you won't have me this easily! You won't have me at all!"

Luthor backed into the room again, holding something green and sharp and caked with dried blood. At least she hoped it was dried blood. He was weaving a bit, as though he was drunk—or maybe Clark had gotten him a good one in the head.

Lois pulled Jason closer and he buried his head into her chest; she wrapped her arms around him, insulating against any sound she could.

"Drop the weapon, Mr. Luthor," a commanding voice ordered—it was gravely, authoritative, and the tone suggested it was just best to do as he said _or else_.

"Imbeciles," Luthor spat, stumbling backwards into the room further as Batman moved steadily closer. "That pathetic excuse for a man, trailing along after Lane like a kicked dog, _believing_ that _crap_ she fed him about her bastard. And _you_," Luthor continued, raising the kryptonite shard as though he was going to stab the Dark Knight, who continued to approach though Luthor had stilled. "You, running around in your cowl and cape, too _afraid_ to show you face. Coward."

"I said _put it down_, Luthor," Batman commanded, his voice even lower, rougher, his expression darker.

Luthor's lips twisted up in an awful smile. "No."

The madman slashed the kryptonite shard across his throat and dropped to the floor, landing in a frosty puddle. His blood joined the water. The puddle enlarged swiftly. Lois shuddered.

Batman straightened; the scowl that had been so terrifying smoothed into a vaguely disappointed frown. He toed the body, which merely continued to empty its fluids onto the floor.

"Clark?" Lois asked, eyes darting to Batman's, needing to know that Clark was okay, wondering what had happened to him. Batman merely looked at her, considering, for a moment. She glared at him.

Then Clark stumbled back through the doorway, looking decidedly worse for wear, and collapsed to his knees beside them, wrapping them in his huge, warm arms and holding tight.

* * *

_A/N: Feedback would be much appreciated!!! There are a few chapters left (and then, I think, a sequal... but that's yet to be determined) before we reach the close. Please, please tell me what you think!_

_The next chapter will be posted before Friday :)_


	56. Chapter 56

Clark hurt. Full stop. He just _hurt_. All of him ached, twinged, pinched, or was very, very sore.

He didn't know how he'd gotten to Wayne Manor, just that he was in the usual bed in his usual suite. The hangings around the bed were pulled back, as were the curtains, letting in the afternoon sunshine. It felt miraculous.

"What happened?" he asked, knowing Bruce was there even though he hadn't spoken.

"Batman abducted you."

"Did you tell the police why?"

"Not really. Just that I had resources you needed to get back on your feet. Lois was quick on the up-take, said she trusted me."

"That'll be all over the news in a few days."

"It already is."

"What?" Clark asked, finally cracking an eyelid to look at his friend. Bruce wore jeans and a t-shirt, bare feet, and was lounging in the armchair he'd pulled from the other room into the bedroom. The sun was gleaming through the window behind him, making him look a bit ethereal.

"It's been three days since I brought you here."

"What happened? I need details," Clark said, opening both eyes and focusing unfailingly on Bruce. For a moment, it looked as though Bruce was going to insist he sleep for another few hours, but then he gave in.

"As far as I can tell, there was a bit of a conflict over who was actually in charge, the Boss or Luthor. From what I've been able to patch together based on Lois and Olson's stories, the Boss had done more recruiting, and more of the thugs saw him as the boss. They mutinied against Luthor, left him for dead in one of the labs, but he wasn't dead. They were going to kill you—White, Olson, Lois, and you—and then continue the testing. They didn't need you. It was probably Luthor's vendetta against Lois and his vindictive streak that kept you all alive for as long as you were.

"Jason's the only surviving witness, and he isn't speaking."

"He's not speaking?" Clark asked, hoping his voice didn't sound as small as he was sure it did.

"He wants to talk to you. He says 'yes' and he says 'no,' but only to his mother, and even then…"

"God, Bruce," Clark sighed, squeezing his eyes closed. "I've royally fucked up his life this time."

"No, you haven't," Bruce said, and the surety in his voice was strong enough to draw Clark's eyes to his face again. "It was an awful thing that happened. Awful things happen to good people all the time. They can be overcome. Don't for a minute think it was your fault—if it wasn't this, it could've been a thousand other things. He still has you, and he still has Lois, and he still has your mother, and he still has Jim Olson. You all will get him through this and he'll be a better, stronger person for it."

Clark was reminded that Bruce had lost his parents when he was a few years older than Jason. He had been the only witness to the double-homicide that had rocked all of Gotham, not to mention his personal world, to the core. He hadn't had an easy time of it, but he'd had Alfred and for awhile he'd had Rachel. He was, if not a happier person, a stronger person, and he was better than many that Clark knew.

When Clark didn't say anything after a few moments, Bruce continued the tale.

"I called Chief Henderson and got an ambulance on the way, using the time to clear the labs of documents and samples. There was enough evidence left behind to tell what they were trying to do, and little enough for the results to be inconclusive."

"Thank you, Bruce."

Bruce nodded sharply once. "I left with you—you needed the sunlamps—just as the police and ambulances arrived. Lois called yesterday," he paused, gauging Clark's expression for a moment. "Perry White died, Clark."

"_What_?"

"He was shot. It was a clean shot, straight through the throat; he died fast."

"No."

"I'm sorry," Bruce said, his face mournful. Clark tried to assimilate the information into his worldview and failed, but Bruce continued. "Nobody else died."

"Thank God."

"Your in-laws were released shortly after I got you here. They're going to be okay, as are the kids who'd been kidnapped, more-or-less. Physically, at least, they will make a full recovery. Some will take longer than others, but they will recover.

"Gil O'Patrick was shot, but it was a flesh wound. The doctors are very positive. Lois was shot," Clark attempted to sit up, but Bruce had been expecting it and stopped him. "Don't move around, idiot. You'll mess up your stitches."

"I don't care about the fucking stitches," Clark growled, but stopped struggling when Bruce didn't relent.

"Lois had three bullets in her leg that had to be removed. They missed the bone. I flew in a surgeon. She's doing very well, no signs of infection."

"And Jason?"

"They're treating his symptoms but, of course, they have no idea what's wrong with him. He's on stronger meds for his asthma, confined to bed so that his hip can heal, and the doctors are monitoring him closely. _They_ took a lot of samples, blood and tissue. It's just going to take time for him to heal; his blood numbers are already getting back to where they're supposed to be."

"And psychologically?"

"I don't know. He seems mostly worried for you, at this point. Like I said, though; he's only talked to his mother, and they've only been able to talk a few times with all the medications Lois is on for pain and all the sleeping Jason has been doing."

"He's been sleeping a lot?"

"Yes. When it's not sunny, he's asleep. When it's sunny, he's sitting in full sunlight. He knows what he needs even if the doctors don't."

"Good," Clark said, trying to be relieved but not really managing it. "Is Jimmy okay?"

"Yes. He was beat up fairly badly, but the bruises are already fading. He was officially discharged, but he's sleeping in the chair in the room Lois and Jason are sharing."

Clark hadn't expected anything differently. He closed his eyes and nodded, once again trying to fit everything into his view of reality. He couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that Perry, Perry White, Editor-in-Chief of the _Daily Planet_, the best boss Superman could ever ask for, was dead.

"What's happening with the _Planet_ if Perry's dead?"

"There haven't been any issues printed since Christmas Day."

"Shit," Clark sighed. The _Daily Planet_ was the largest news corporation in the business, hands down. Their paper newspaper was the most widely read in North America; their website got more hits than their two leading competitors combined. It was a humongous, well-oiled machine based out of Metropolis, with offices in almost every country with a U.S. embassy around the world. It was the most-read newspaper in the United States and Canada, with an office in every state. In the history of the _Planet_, there had only been one day when there had been no paper, and that had been when they'd observed a day of silence for the passing of the first-ever Editor-in-Chief. It had been unorthodox, but it had actually increased paper sales.

"Yeah, it's throwing people off a bit," Bruce said, one corner of his mouth quirking up, but Clark could tell he wasn't very amused. "But you can't expect much different—the core staff was kidnapped and almost blown up; the workaholic, non-delegation-friendly editor-in-chief is killed shortly after; the two most obvious for next-in-line to the top job were held hostage and are now hospitalized… Your webmistress has been posting rough-edits of whatever writers are turning in and press release-format updates on the conditions of those traumatized. You should give the woman a medal or something."

- - -

It was another three days before Clark's powers began returning. He spent those days checking the _Planet_'s website, reading newspapers that weren't the _Daily Planet_ and soaking up the sunshine. He napped a lot. He was able to talk to Lois on the phone for almost an hour the second day, but not Jason.

Bruce and Alfred elected him the worst patient ever; Alfred mimed a jig when Clark's skin began knitting itself together visibly and they were able to take his stitches out. They kept him busy looking through the files in which they'd catalogued the evidence the Boss and Luthor had collected on Jason and Kryptonian genes, but reading them, while informative, made Clark angry. When he would remember that Luthor and the Boss were both dead, he'd want to go see Jason even more, but Bruce and Alfred insisted he remain as stationary as possible and soak up the sunlight. At that point, Bruce would dig out an old book in Mandarin and take away Clark's 'file privileges.'

After his injuries had healed, it was another day before his powers truly began returning, but that didn't stop him from borrowing some of Bruce's clothes and indulging in the Wayne Enterprises helicopter to Metropolis General. He flew it himself (Bruce threatened him many miserable things if he should crash it), and Alfred was his copilot, as Bruce had insisted—and Alfred had agreed (Clark hated it when they teamed up on him)—he needed the wingman. Bruce himself would've come, but there was enough media around them already, and he would be in conferences concerning Wayne Enterprise's acquisition of another company for what he described as eternity.

Jimmy and Henderson were both waiting on the roof of Met. General when Clark set the helicopter down on the landing pad.

"I'm not going to ask if you have a license for that," Henderson said, shaking his head. Clark only smirked—he had, of course, taken the required lessons and been registered and licensed… when he was 19; it had been a summer project, a hobby he'd taken up when his mother had been on the recovery and well enough to notice that he was spending every waking hour taking care of her and the farm. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm great, Chief," Clark said, his smirk shifting into a more natural, if small, smile. There was residual pain in the ribs he had broken and his lungs twinged a bit if he breathed too deeply, but otherwise he was mostly alright. There were phantom aches in his joints from kryptonite poisoning, but he was able to ignore it. His stitches were gone, leaving greenish bruises and pinkish flesh, some with the white lines of scars, behind. He knew he looked as though he'd had a month to heal, not a mere ten days. "Okay, Jimmy?"

He'd been dreading facing Jimmy again. Jimmy who was his best friend in the bullpen, who always looked out for them even though he could hardly look out for himself sometimes. Jimmy who didn't actually _know_ anything, but probably had had enough of his suspicions confirmed recently so that he was feeling severely misused.

"Okay," Jimmy said, his voice quiet, almost reluctant. He looked Clark over with the eyes of a photographer, the ones that noticed everything. "You're alright? Batman just dragged you off. Nobody knew where—except Lois, who isn't saying anything."

"Batman," Clark chuckled; the ridiculousness of the names the press had assigned them struck him at the most awkward times, "knew that I'm good friends with Bruce Wayne, and that Bruce has the resources to get the treatment I needed."

"You'd think he would've taken Jason and Lois, too," Jimmy said, almost accused. Clark felt bad; he'd never had reason to be accused of anything by Jimmy before.

"He's Batman, Jim; not Superman," Clark said softly. "He isn't exactly renowned for his tender, caring heart."

Jimmy just grunted. Henderson glanced between them, raised his eyebrows at Clark, who merely shook his head in response, and then directed them downstairs, handing Clark another laminated security pass so that he'd be able to visit Jason and Lois.

Lois and Jason were in what classified as a semi-private room, but they were the only ones in it. They weren't in their own wing as Clark had been when he'd last been an official patient, but they were under intense security, seeing as Lois had kidnapped the last time she'd been a patient. There was a guard at each nurse station, checking ID and laminated security badges. There was another outside Lois and Jason's door.

Lois started sobbing the moment he stepped through the door, which made his heart hurt a bit. It was after official visiting hours, so the Lanes and Troupes weren't there—Clark wasn't sure, exactly, what Jimmy's excuse was. Jason was sound asleep, his breathing more-or-less peaceful, on the bed under the window, the curtain partially pulled around it so that the light from the lamp beside Lois's bed, she'd been reading, couldn't reach him.

Clark went to her and held her as she cried. He couldn't understand most of what she said, but it didn't really matter. There was a lot about his having promised never to leave and how worried she'd been while he was in Gotham even though she'd _known_ he was alright, that he was getting help, and had talked to him on the phone a few times. She was worried about Jason and how quiet he'd been, and about how Jimmy was reacting to the whole thing, and she was upset that Perry had died.

"It's so surreal," she said, shuddering slightly, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. "I just can't imagine the _Planet_ without him…"

Clark held her close until she fell asleep, exhausted from her worries and her tears, in his arms. Then he tucked her in and turned off the light, going over to Jason's bed and sitting on the edge, opening the curtain on the window so that the moonlight—which was reflected sunlight, after all—fell across him. The little boy didn't stir even as Clark stroked his hair.

For the first time in a week and a half, Clark felt very nearly peaceful.

* * *

_Sorry about the late update! _


	57. Chapter 57

It was a dark and stormy night. Jason had fallen asleep as the sun set, leaving the curtains by his bed open as he did so that Lois could see the rain pelting and smearing the glass as well as hear it thundering down on the building around them.

Her leg ached, but she stayed on her feet and tucked him in anyway, leaning over, ignoring the twinge, to close the curtains. He kept them open for the sun and to watch for his dad, but Clark wasn't coming. He was gone.

"But you promised," Lois whispered to herself, returning to her bed and curling into a ball. The heart monitor's beeping seemed to slow to an exaggerated crawl, the beeps lengthening, drawing out impossibly. "You promised you wouldn't leave again…"

She woke with a start, shooting upright and regretting it a moment later. The quick movement jarred her thigh, and she was immediately light-headed, both with the pain and from the blood that rushed away from her head when she sat up.

"Fuck it all," she groaned.

"Alright?" Clark asked, and his warm hand on the side of her face was the most soothing thing she could've been offered. "You were mumbling in your sleep."

"Bad dream."

"Want to talk about it?"

"No, definitely not," she said, opening her eyes so that she could look at him. His concerned face, his so-blue eyes, dark hair, the hints of bruises that were the only signs of what they'd all been through. He was there, though. He was concerned and he was sitting at her hip, cupping her face and soothing her. "It was just a dream."

"How are you feeling?" he asked, still hovering nearby. The curtains were open beside Jason's bed; she could see the first hints of pre-dawn light through the window. Jason would be up soon.

"They're flesh wounds, Clark. The bullets missed the bone. The surgeon was so good he had half the regular surgical staff observing. I'm on so many drugs I'm more likely to spontaneously genetically mutate than get an infection, and I'm even doped up for the pain. I just moved too fast; I'm fine."

Clark released a long breath, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers, cupping her face in his huge, warm hands. His palms were so soft, it amazed her that they hadn't been one of the give-aways when she'd been trying to pin his alternate identity on him—it was impossible for a man of his age and background (especially considering the swordplay he indulged in regularly) not to have calluses on his hands and fingers, but he was invulnerable, and that meant his hands were shaped the way they were shaped, no rough patches.

Lois set aside her contemplation of Clark's hands in order to simply enjoy his touch. She'd _missed_ him in the nearly two weeks that he'd been in Gotham going through the paces of his own recovery. He'd told her about it during their telephone conversation. Knowing he was mending just the same as she was hadn't been the same as seeing him walk through the door, more-or-less whole, or being able to hold onto him.

Lois found herself crying again. She tried to stifle the sobs—she knew very well that she wasn't a pretty crier, like people who cry in movies, with streams of beautiful, clear tears streaming down their cheeks. She was a reality crier. Her nose became a snot spout, her face went red and her eyes puffed up, her makeup smudged and ran. When she reached what she thought of as the halfway-point in her crying mess of an episode, she would start to shake uncontrollably and, if she didn't get a hold of herself, would head into the whole sobbing-mess thing all over again. It was exhausting; it wasn't a pretty picture. Clark didn't seem to mind that she got snotty and gross. He seemed to want to hold her anyway—which was good, because she didn't plan to let go ever again. After a moment, they shifted so that Clark could join her on the narrow hospital bed. She remained flat on her back, and Clark spooned up against her side, nearest hand holding her nearest hand, fingers laced together, his other arm wrapped across her stomach, his palm warming her hip. His forehead was pressed against her temple, his breath, incongruously cool compared to his high body temperature, was soothingly even on her neck.

She squeezed her eyes tight and held onto his hand, her opposite hand finding purchase on the elbow of the arm across her stomach and she dug her fingers in. Her time without him had been hell.

_Lois felt as though she was in the way, sitting across from Jason in the back of the ambulance as the EMTs looked him over. He still wasn't breathing easily and they weren't sure what to make of the wound they'd found high on his hip. Lois hated that she still felt helpless even though she wasn't chained to a pole anymore._

_She'd been wrapped in a thick blanket and directed to her chair before the doors had closed on them, shutting out Clark. She didn't know what had happened to him or who had pulled him to the side, but she hoped he would ignore them and get himself treatment. She didn't have anything to do but worry about them. The only thing she had to distract herself with was form on the clipboard she'd been handed, but she'd already filled in Jason's name and list of medications. _

"_I'm done," she told the nearest EMT, handing it over. _

"_What the…?" the EMT said, taking the clipboard but turning it over to show her a smear of blood. Lois looked down at her lap; seeing her left thigh, it could only be described as a bloody mess, seemed to reactivate the sensations that the adrenalin had dulled. Her thigh truly roared with pain. _

_The EMT was on her in a second, organizing a second stretcher and helping her onto it, talking about gunshot wounds. _

"_Mom?" Jason asked, though she could barely understand him through the oxygen mask they'd pressed over his nose and mouth. The world was shifting and spinning around her, the sirens seeming to get louder and more dominant in her ears, but she managed to reach out and get a hold of his hand before everything went black._

_When Lois woke again, she was in a semi-private room in the hospital wearing a backless paper gown in a standard hospital bed. There was a window beside her bed, the curtains tightly closed, and a hanging divide pulled back to reveal two other beds, both empty, in the room. There was a doctor, an older man with tufty silvering hair and square reading glasses wearing a long white coat over his shirt and tie, reviewing her chart. _

"_Who're you?" she croaked, immediately looking around for water. _

"_Good afternoon, Miss Lane," the man, his badge identified him as a doctor but she couldn't read the actual name, said, his voice was a high tenor. Lois's first, obscure thought was that he probably had a lovely singing voice. "I'm Dr. Arthur Abignale; I'm in charge of your son's case."_

"_Is Jason okay?" Lois asked, trying to sit up, but her left thigh positively burned at even the thought of tensing the muscle in order to shift her position and she fell back against the pillows almost immediately. _

"_Please, lay back and relax. Your surgery went very well but you need to rest to recover."_

_Lois hated doctors for the simple power they held with phrases like that. They had the authority to enforce things like bed rest, and keep people in hospitals even if all they wanted to do was take their children, newborn or otherwise, home. _

"_Surgery?" She couldn't recall any plans for surgery. She quickly took stock. She felt remarkably well, considering the pain she'd been in when last conscious. Her wrists were bandaged but didn't even sting, and she had an IV in her arm, which always irritated her, though that was more of a psychological thing than a reaction to the adhesive. She felt a bit groggy. Her thigh hurt. _

"_You had three bullets in you left thigh. They missed the bone," Dr. Abignale looked down at her chart again. "You're going to be fine. You just need to rest up, concentrate on getting better. There will be physical therapy after the wounds heal over to get the muscles back to business, and you'll probably need a cane for awhile, but it all looks good."_

_Lois wanted to glare at him. She'd spent her entire childhood on a variety of military bases. Her father had, throughout the years when she'd been old enough to comprehend the conversations around her, been the commanding officer. He had sometimes listened to doctors just like Abignale give their thoughts on recoveries. They were always optimistic. Due to both recent events and those of her past, Lois was disinclined to hold out on pure optimism; she needed to plan for the bad. She didn't want a doctor, not even _her_ doctor at that, telling her she was going to be fine and leaving out all the chances that she should be considering and trying to avoid. _

"_Here; have some water," the doctor said, startling her from her thoughts. She glared at him, but didn't protest as he rearranged her bed and pillows so that she could sit up and sip at a glass of water. _

"_You said you're Jason's doctor."_

"_Yes, I am," he said, straightening, suddenly looking much more professional._

_He'd then delivered a speech that had amounted to what Lois was sure it would've felt like if the bullets had hit her in the gut instead of the thigh. _

_They didn't know what was wrong with Jason. They were treating his symptoms and those treatments were working, but they didn't know how to fix the overall problem. His asthma had been improving since his birthday but it had taken a sudden turn for the worse, as if he'd spent a month in a room full of dust and allergens, breathing deeply. They'd switched him to a stronger cousin of the medicine he'd already been taking via inhaler. The bone marrow biopsy had been done well and the site had been properly cleaned, but the doctors had him on a round of antibiotics and had thoroughly cleaned out the wound, which, Abignale assured her, was healing well. He wasn't in a great deal of pain, didn't even need medication for it, just an ice pack and to sit still. _

_He gave her a packet of paper and went through it with her, having her sign on various lines, approving Jason's continuing treatment. After much glaring and a bit of swearing on her part, Dr. Abignale promised to have Jason moved into her semi-private room—she wanted him nearby, not by other ill children. She wasn't allowed to get up to go visit him, so the doctors would just have to bring them together. _

_The following week had been miserable. She and Jason had been together, but Jason had been quiet and sad. He was traumatized and no matter how soothing her presence was—and it _was_ soothing, she knew—he wanted his dad. He was just a little boy who wanted his father. Simple as that. It hurt Lois to the core that Clark was sitting in a bed so far away, wanting just as badly, she knew, to be at his son's bedside, but unable to travel…_

_Talking with him on the phone had assuaged _her_ misery slightly, but Jason had been sleeping. Having Jimmy and Lucy and Ron and Jenny and Lola and Momma and the General around hadn't helped much. Jimmy was suspicious, he wasn't the carefree photographer she was used to (but she didn't blame him for the edge), but he was a constant, helpful, protective, comforting presence. Lucy was soothing, as always. No matter how different the sisters were, Lois and Lucy had always been able to rely on each other. Momma hovered and fussed, but she was comforting, too. Ron mostly looked worried and tended to Jenny and Lola. The General stood by the door and watched everybody, a reassuring presence if nothing else. _

_Luckily, some doctor or another—or maybe it had been Chris Henderson—had put a ban on asking serious questions. Lois had given her statement to him after enough of the initial medication was out of her system after surgery, and he'd made it seem as though that was that, nothing more to it. She knew very well that it was more complicated, but she was grateful she didn't have to worry about it. No potentially stress-inducing topics of conversation until Lois and Jason brought them up and were ready for them, the order seemed to have been. So there was merely a huge elephant in the room, sometimes sitting quietly other times tap dancing circles around them all. _

Lois was rather glad it was too early to be official visiting hours. While she appreciated having them around, her family could be, quite simply, too much sometimes. She loved them dearly, but she'd always been the type to need 'alone time,' or at least a quiet, if brief, reprise from conversation. She knew full well that it was a trait she inherited from the General.

"Clark," Lois said, deciding to broach the last topic while she had the chance—Jason was sleeping and there were no hovering family members about. It was something Dr. Abignale had let slip, something of which he'd thought she'd already been aware…

"What's the matter? Should I call the nurse?" Clark asked, already halfway sitting up. Lois rolled her eyes and squeezed his hand.

"No, I'm fine; don't call the nurse," she smiled at him, attempting to be reassuring. She was too nervous, though. "Could you help me sit up?"

He dutifully adjusted bed and pillows so that she was propped in a sitting position before taking his place at her hip, turned so that he could examine her face, his fingers lacing with hers again. She liked that he finally seemed to be reaching out to touch her without second thought—he'd always been so reluctant, even shying away from the sort of touches friends shared.

"You're making me nervous, sweetheart," he informed her, his otherworldly eyes dilated in the dim light, making them seem darker. Lois brought the hand that he wasn't holding up to her mouth and nibbled at the thumb nail. He smiled briefly at the familiar nervous habit, reaching out and removing the hand, holding onto it, too. Out of nervous gestures for the moment, Lois took a deep breath and met his eyes.

Opening her mouth to tell him, to just _say it_, she promptly began chewing on her lip.

- - -

Clark was too nervous to laugh, but he almost had to—he had to do _something_. Lois was very nervous about whatever it was she was trying to tell him, and it was rubbing off. He'd become very sensitive to her moods over the years—to the point where their empathy bridged emotions and allowed them to communicate almost entirely nonverbally at times.

"Lois?" He released one of her hands so that he could free her poor chewed lower lip from between her teeth with the pad of his thumb. She had very soft, kissable lips. He liked to kiss them, anyway. _Stay on track, Kent_, he admonished himself. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter, exactly, it's just…" she sighed, obviously becoming annoyed with herself.

"Lois," he said, quietly but boldly, his tone making her eyes jump up to meet his from where she'd been staring resolutely at his right shoulder. "Whatever it is, just say it."

She closed her eyes, inhaled through her nose, then spoke, eyes firmly shut. "I'm pregnant."

Time seemed to stop. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to react. Was she happy about it, but worried he'd be unhappy? No, she definitely didn't seem happy about it… What if she was just unhappy about his potential to be unhappy about it? Was he happy about it? Was _she_ happy about it? Was she mad at him? Was she sad? What about Jason?

Clark took a deep breath, trying to clear his head. He couldn't help but be excited; he loved Jason dearly and he'd had only a short bit of time to get to know him. In the back of his mind, he already had visions of he and Lois with another little baby together, a brother or sister to play with Jason—a son or daughter that he would be able to be present for every moment of life from birth, as he hadn't been able to with Jason…

_You're being selfish, Clark_, he told himself. _Lois is the one who has to carry the child, who has to give birth. And she's just been shot in the leg—oh, God, that could've ended so much worse than it did!—and through a horrifying experience. We almost lost Jason. Is it really the right time to bring another child into our patched-up family? Ever since I've returned, it's been nothing but trouble for Lois and Jason… _

"Clark, you promised," Lois said very softly, and he realized that her eyes were open and she was looking at him intently, almost worriedly.

"What?"

"You _promised_."

"What did I promise?" he asked, his eyebrows drawing together—he could think of plenty of promised he had made, most of the recent ones to Lois, but he could not for the life of him think of any promises involving children… except for the part about being there for Jason, which he would be, another child or not.

"You promised you wouldn't leave again," she said, a single tear managing to escape from the corner of her eye, trailing down the line of her cheekbone until it met his hand where he was still cupping her cheek.

"Lois!" he gasped. "Sweetheart, how could you think I would be thinking of leaving you?"

"It happened last time," she said, very quietly.

"No, Lois," he said, attempting to infuse his voice with all the reassurance he could manage. "No."

He leant down and kissed her tenderly, still cupping her face. He was sure she was going to start crying again, and hated himself for it. All he seemed to do lately was get her into trouble and make her cry.

"I'm not going _anywhere_, sweetheart. Not ever."

"You're not mad?"

"Why would I be _mad_?"

"Well, because," she said, angrily swiping away another tear. "I know you love Jason, I really do, but I also know that having a son has only brought you trouble so far. And it's my fault, really—I forgot the condoms, when we—"

"I didn't think of them either, Lois," he said, fighting down a blush—_You have a son, you are not supposed to be blushing at the mention of _sex_ for God's sake!_

"But how were you supposed to know I wasn't on birth control?" she asked, and Clark could see she was preparing to work herself into a right snit of anxiety and self-blame.

He leant down and kissed her, then fixed her with a serious look. "Lois," he said, waiting until she was looking him in the eye before he continued. "I'm not mad. I've never been so happy in my life. I love Jason and I wouldn't trade him for the world, and I know I'll love any and all of the children we ever have together," he assured her, hoping it was the right thing to say. His parents had always told him that the truth was _always _the right thing (barring a few select subject, such as his alien heritage and just what had _really_ happened to the Tupperware Rick had left in their fridge), the best thing, but things were more complicated now that it wasn't the truth about who left the milk out or forgot to lock the barn. The truth was that he'd support Lois in anything. He wanted her to be happy about having another child with him, but he didn't want her to _pretend _to be happy about it because _he _was happy about it. It was too late to take it back, though.

Slowly, he leaned forward slightly and weaved one hand into the hair at the base of her neck and used the thumb of his free hand to wipe away the tear trails. "I love you, I love Jason, I'm never leaving again, no matter _who_ comes along. I promise."

"No matter who?" Lois repeated, voice quaking only slightly. There was a new, slightly more confident look in her eyes. "I mean, I know it isn't the best _timing_…"

"These things don't really work according to any plans of ours, Lois," he said. It was something Benji had said to another adult at his father's funeral. He hadn't known Clark was listening (he'd been across the room, after all), and the two men had been talking about how the timing of Jonathan's death so close on the heels of Jessica's passing was so hard on Martha and Clark. It had turned into Benji's God-has-a-purpose-behind-everything,-good-or-bad,-even-if-we-can't-see-what-it-is speech, one that Clark had been quite familiar with in his childhood, but hadn't heard in years.

Lois burst into tears again, startling Clark. He blinked at her and then wrapped her in his arms when she threw herself at him—or it would've been throwing herself at him if they'd been more than a few inches apart. Her arms were around his neck, her face buried in his shoulder; he held onto her tightly, rubbing her back. His natural inclination was to rock her gently, but he knew the movement would aggravate her injured thigh.

"I love you," she said into his shirt. "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you."

"I love you back, Lois," he said, unable to keep from smiling. He realized that he'd been grinning like an idiot since just before she'd begun crying again. They were relieved tears, he could tell, and he felt as though he should be shedding a few of his own, but he couldn't stop smiling. "I love you so much."

* * *

_A/N: A chapter of cliché's, yes? I figured starting with 'it was a dark and stormy night,' a phrase surely haunting Lois' nightmares in one form or another, was poetic justice for the setup I'm sure you people saw coming from a mile away. There are only so many ways you can set it up, after all, and, after a point, they're fairly predictable. I'd love feedback on this chapter, please! All my medical information comes from Google and/or Wikipedia, so… yeah. And I don't have any kids of my own, so I've never had this 'expanding the family' conversation/scenario from this perspective (though I had it twice as an older sister—my younger sister (the one they had when I was two so I didn't get or don't remember their 'so you're gonna be a big sister' speech) actually didn't believe my parents when they told us Mom was expecting my brother. She laughed and laughed and simply didn't believe them until Mom was in maternity clothes and they hadn't changed the story. I found that rather entertaining—she believed them when they told us about my other younger sister, of course). _

_Expect the next update 'round the middle of next week-ish :)_


	58. Chapter 58

"I fainted when they told me," Lois admitted, making Clark smile. She mock-glared at him. "You _always _make me faint, you know."

"What? I do not!"

"Yes, you do," she smirked. "What did I do as soon as you took off after I first met you in the Suit? I fainted right there on the landing pad. What did I do as soon as you took off after you put the plane down in the stadium? I fainted and slid all the way down that inflatable evacuation thing head first! What did I do when I found out I was pregnant with your child? I fainted right here in my hospital bed."

"Oh, Lois," he couldn't help but say. She rolled her eyes at him, but let him kiss her.

They'd just come to the mutual agreement that another child was a good thing, timing be damned, and were wondering how to tell everybody, how to tell Jason, when the little boy in their quiet conversation rolled over so that he was facing the window, and the sunrise (the window faced south, so there was a decent view of both sunrise and sunset, and plenty of sunlight over the course of the day), and woke up.

Clark watched, enthralled. Jason's breathing changed first. Clark could just hear it. The breaths became shallower but no less even, then he lifted his head slightly, just enough to see over bottom edge of the window. After a moment, as though assuring himself that it was really another sunrise over Metropolis, Jason sat up slowly, stiffly, and scooted his hips back a bit before crossing his legs.

The little boy stared out the window for a moment, breathing, the sun playing across his pale skin. Clark was sure it was the most beautiful, if also one of the saddest, things he'd ever seen.

Jason seemed to come to terms with the fact that the world had indeed decided to progress into another day after all while he was asleep, and twisted his body around in his bed so that he was facing the rest of the room. His eyes went wide when he saw Clark, and Clark, with a last stroke of his fingers through Lois's hair, immediately rose and went to his son's bedside.

-

Jason reached up and wound his arms around his father. Even as he began to squeeze, to hold tighter, he knew he wouldn't be able to hold as tight as he wanted, needed to.

"Careful, Jase," Dad said softly, and Jason nearly burst into tears. His father wasn't invulnerable, wasn't as sturdy and reassuring as he always was. He was present, sure, but he couldn't take a powerful, tension-clearing hug.

Jason did begin to cry, then, for the first time since he'd woken up in the hospital. He hated hospitals, hated doctors offices and visits. His entire life, he'd been poked and prodded, and told to breathe into this or that weird-looking device, given new medicines, shots, exams. He hated it. He knew Mom hated it, too. And he'd hated visiting Dad in the hospital after he'd fallen so far from the sky—the _smell_ of the hospital, the too-clean tang covering up the deeper smells of sick, bleeding people, fear, sadness, and death.

Since he couldn't hold tight, he let go and buried himself in his father's shirt instead. It was just a t-shirt, and it was loose, so it was good for burrowing into, fisting, hiding. Dad wrapped his arms around his back and held tight, rubbing comforting circles. It wasn't as confining, and therefore protecting, as he was used to, but it would do.

Jason cried himself out, not hearing his mother crying, quietly, too.

Dad's presence made everything a little better, though. Jason didn't know why, but just having his dad there, in the room, visible and hug-able, made the past few weeks a little easier to deal with. He could tell his mom felt better about everything when Dad was around, too.

For the first time since Mom had passed out, her hand going limp in his, in the ambulance, closing his eyes didn't bring Luthor's face to mind. Didn't bring the mean laugh to his ears, or the pale, superior expression on the Boss's face. He hoped that, sometime soon, he'd be able to forget it all entirely.

After awhile, Dad had to pull back to let the doctors give him his morning check-up. Jason knew that they didn't know how to make him better just as well as he knew that his dad did—just as well as he knew that, until Dad could fly again, there was no way they could get to the lights in the Fortress.

He was given a fresh cold pack for the sore spot where the Boss's doctors, or maybe they'd been Luthor's, had put a needle _inside_ his bone. He knew it had gone all the way inside because he had felt it, and he had heard it, even without the special abilities that came with being part Kryptonian.

The needle had burned when it had gone into his skin, but he'd gotten shots before, and his dad had been there to hold his hand. But then the needle had kept going. It was such a long needle. It had been very scary, lying there, held down, sure they were going to push the needle all the way through him and he would die. He had been able to hear a soft sort of crunching sound when the needle had found his bone and gone into it. He'd started screaming.

The pain had continued for a long time, especially after the bad men had dragged Dad out of the room. It had gone all up and down his leg, only fading a little bit after the needle had finally been taken out of him. He was glad that he hadn't died or popped or anything, but it still _hurt_. And Dad wasn't there to hold his hand anymore—though Jason had felt a little better to see him physically dragged away, to know without a doubt that Dad would've been there holding his hand if the bad men had let him.

He'd had to lie there on the bed in the empty room—the doctors and the Boss and Luthor had all left—by himself, crying and hurting, scared and alone. What had felt like a lifetime later, the Boss had reentered the room with a nurse who was pushing a wheelchair. The Boss had sprayed more kryptonite dust in Jason's face, so he'd hardly noticed any pain when they'd lifted him off the bed and tied him into the wheelchair because he had been terrified, unable to breathe.

Where the needle had gone in felt like a really bad bruise now, like he'd fallen off the swings. It wasn't comfortable, but it wasn't as scary as it had been before. It had stopped bleeding, the doctors changed the bandage every day—he couldn't get a good look at the scab or anything, though—and their voices didn't sound as worried as they did before.

Mostly, Jason was sure everything was going to be alright now that his dad was back. It had been scary to see Mom and Dad as helpless as him. Especially Dad. Dad was _Superman_ and yet the bad men had just dragged him from the room, punching him in the face just like they would anyone else.

But Dad was okay. He was sitting in the chair between Jason's and Mom's bed, reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Uncle Jimmy had bought it from the gift shop downstairs when Mom had said that Dad was reading the books to Jason before bed. He'd been so tired, though. Uncle Jimmy simply read when he was awake and let him sleep when he drifted off. Jason liked the story; it was something to think about that distracted him from worrying about his mom or wondering where his dad was or if his lungs were ever going to work normally.

- - -

"How are you today, bud?" Clark asked when he saw Jason's eyes blink open only to squint against the bright sunlight.

"Urgh," said Jason, squeezing his eyes shut again and burying his face in his pillow. "Why'm I so _tired_?"

"It's part of recovering, that's all," Clark assured him

"How about some breakfast?" Lois asked, looking at her boys from her bed not too far away and getting a sleepy smile in return.

Jason had yet to be awake and alert enough to really talk about what had happened, but he seemed to be aware of it. As of yet, there didn't seem to be any nightmares breaking into his sleep cycle, and all the sleeping and eating really _did_ seem to be helping him recover from all his small injuries and the kryptonite poisoning.

"Can we go t' the Fortress, Dad?" Jason asked as Clark helped him to sit up, fluffing his pillows to prop him in place. "It goes so much _faster_ there."

"Soon, Jason," Clark assured him, wishing for all the world that he _could_ just pick Jason up and take him to the Fortress. The intense light treatment was exactly what he needed to irradiate all the kryptonite—Clark could feel it, the tiny amount present, in Jason, in his lungs again. He couldn't fly yet, though. He couldn't bring him to the Fortress; he couldn't fix it.

Lois reached out and put a hand on his shoulder after hitting the call button to summon the nurse who would know to bring Jason's breakfast. Clark glanced up and she smiled at him, and he couldn't help but smile back.

-

It wasn't difficult for Clark to realize that Jimmy was, in a word, _furious_ with him. He couldn't blame the younger man, really. Either way, it was a very unfortunate time to have one of his best friends mad at him.

Clark had been back in Metropolis for three days, and they'd hardly been uneventful. The first day had been spent making quiet plans with Lois to find an apartment together in Metropolis—they wanted someplace quite a bit more private than either of their current apartments, possibly even a house—and soothing and reassuring Jason. Clark had felt a bit manic, elation rising in his chest whenever he looked at Lois and thought of the child she carried, and worry nearly overwhelming him when he looked at Jason's perpetually sleeping form.

The second day had contained a brief visit from Lois's family and Jimmy over the dinner hour. Jimmy hadn't spoken to them, but he hadn't been a malevolent presence (unlike the General, who made it clear that he thought Clark had been off at a bar in Gotham for a week and a half while his son and the mother of his son were in the hospital). Ron and Lucy and their girls had been spending most of their time playing board games and cards together and talking through the experience; bonding. They were just glad it was over and wanted to move on. Ella and the General wanted answers, though, as did Jimmy. Answers Lois and Clark weren't ready to give, and certainly not in such a public place as Met. General.

Alfred was a lifesaver as far as Clark was concerned. Not only did his presence confuse the hell out of the General, but he was a staunch ally. It was 'Master Kent' this, and 'Master Kent' that, which amused Lois and annoyed Jimmy; he stood guard just inside the door after Clark's initial homecoming to Lois's arms. 'Master Jason' adored him, and 'Miss Jennifer' and 'Miss Lola' found him, and his accent, adorable.

Dinner had passed quickly and the nurses had insisted the extra bodies vacate the room after they'd finished eating. Including Clark. Despite his protests, and Jason's, he'd been led out. Fuming, he'd promised he'd be back as soon as he could and stalked up to the roof, Alfred at his heels, and taken the chopper to the _Planet._

The building had been alarmingly vacant. Despite the regularly updated website, the paper seemed to be in mourning. Just looking at the dark room beyond the glass of Perry's office had felt a bit like Luthor twisting the kryptonite shiv in his back. Sitting at his desk, it had taken him the better part of two hours to write an obituary for Perry White; nothing had seemed to get across the respect, gratitude, reverence he'd felt for the editor-in-chief.

In the end, he'd posted almost five thousand words describing Perry's impact on his life and his inability to describe just how grateful he was to have met him. He'd added a list of Perry's accomplishments over the years—various journalism awards, significant personal-life dates, the Big Stories he'd covered both as a reporter and an editor—and posted links to the archived copies of his most well-known articles. He'd riffled through the _Planet_'s database and found pictures of Perry over the years, some of which had been used in Jimmy's photo albums at the Anniversary Gala, some that had not been seen by anybody other than procrastinating _Planet_ employees in several years, and created a memorial album on the website as well.

He would add more to the story later, after Lois and Jason were out of the hospital. He hadn't spoken to Alice since her husband had died, nor any of Perry's family or friends. He felt he should speak to Alice on a personal level, he'd known her for many, many years, before he interviewed her for her husband's, his friend's, obituary.

Alfred, who knew full well that Clark had spent dinner encouraging his son to eat instead of eating, ordered take-out and refused to allow him to take off again until he'd eaten. Grudgingly, Clark had gone through three cartons of sesame chicken and rice before cleaning up and heading for the rooftop and the _Planet_'s landing pad.

The nurses hadn't argued with his reentry to Lois and Jason's room, which was beneficial to their health in Clark's scathing thoughts. He'd arrived just in time to hear Lois finish a chapter in Jason's book and kissed his son goodnight before tucking him into the hospital bed and settling in the chair beside Lois. The three of them—Clark, Lois, and Alfred—had talked for more than an hour before Lois had drifted off to sleep.

The fourth day, Clark could feel his powers returning to full. By sundown, he'd been able to hover quite easily.

"I do believe that is our cue to return the helicopter to Gotham, Master Kent," Alfred said concisely when he'd noticed what Clark was doing. Lois, drifting in and out of wakefulness, had barely batted an eyelash when he'd told her he would be back in a little while. He'd been agitated the whole flight, annoying Alfred with his fidgeting. The old butler was glad to be rid of him once they landed at Wayne Manor, he was sure.

The whirlwind truly took off after he regained his powers. He spent an hour that felt like a second soaring through the upper atmosphere absorbing sunlight that trilled through his veins like the final note of a well-played nocturne. Haunting, thoughtful, peaceful.

When he was sure he wouldn't fall from the air when he took on the weight of another, even one so small as Jason, _especially_ one so small as Jason, Clark went to the hospital and entered through the window beside Jason's bed. Lois's relieved smile was balm for his patchwork soul. He lifted Jason into his arms, still sleeping, pecked Lois on the cheek, and took to the air once again.

Jason woke as the light finished its work. He took a deep breath, then beamed at his father. Clark felt lighter than air; lighter than he'd ever felt when flying.

"How do you feel, kiddo?" he asked, looking up from where he'd been sitting not far off, reading from one of the Kryptonian info-disks, holographic texts of literature, science, mathematics, and beyond. He'd chosen a Kryptonian classic, a novel about a young woman coming into herself, understanding her emotional mother only after the mother's death, and finally being able to settle down with the man she had loved since she was young due to that understanding. Clark had always thought, in retrospect, that it was rather "The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" meets "Pride and Prejudice," only on Krypton and following Krypton's particular, and rather complicated, courting rituals and formal lines between generations and within families. He was a romantic at heart, after all.

"Great," Jason said, hopping off the platform and soaring around the room once, giddy. Clark couldn't help but smile as he watched the boy perform barrel rolls and what the Harry Potter of Jason's most recent nighttime reading would call a Wronski Feint.

They took their time flying home, Clark indulging in more aerial acrobatics—for once a duet instead of a solo performance—than he had since his teenage years. Jason, soaking up the sunlight as they flew like a little battery, continued his exuberance, attempting to outmaneuver Clark at every turn. Clark eventually lost the performance; his cape tangled around his head after an abrupt change in directions and Jason had laughed helplessly, falling twenty feet in his mirth.

"No capes!" he said, imitating a character from The Incredibles so closely that Clark was sure his son had spent the majority of his life before Clark's return in front of the television. He'd joined the laughter, though, and they had finally made their way back to Metropolis, Clark having Jason guide them to Met. General and Lois's window by following her heartbeat.

Clark tucked Jason into bed again before reluctantly departing. The night staff at the hospital thought he'd gone to Gotham. He couldn't just be in the room when the doctor arrived for Jason's morning appointment (the one at which said doctor would discover a remarkable, unexplainable recovery...) Instead, Clark returned to his apartment for the first time since Christmas Eve, not bothering to do more than latch the door to the balcony behind him before he collapsed onto his bed.

* * *

_A/N: K, so apparantly Friday is the new middle of the week... sorry!_

_The next chapter is in the makings and will be posted as soon as I finish writing it :)_


	59. Chapter 59

If Clark's life could usually be compared to a sea—with tides, the occasional surface-disturbance in the form of boaters and small storms, and the like—the sea in question was currently suffering a bad case of the hurricanes.

He woke to the smell of a Smallville breakfast—bacon, eggs (omelets, to be more specific, with peppers, cheese, mushrooms, ham, onions…), sausage, and, he was fairly certain, blueberry pancakes. His first thought was that Ma had set up camp in his apartment and he'd somehow managed to miss it in his exhaustion the previous night, but the blueberry pancakes screamed Rick Kent.

"Gettup!" Rick yelled, pounding on the door just on cue.

"M'up!" Clark shouted back, leaping out of bed and switching the Suit for pajama pants before he knew what he was doing. Rick was laughing when he made it out to the kitchen in two seconds flat.

"You are very bad at letting people know when you're alright," Rick admonished the moment Clark stepped into the kitchen.

"Jeez, Rick. Can't a guy walk into _his own_ kitchen without getting scolded?"

"Not when he's been an idiot. Do you have _any_ idea what your mother's been going through since Christmas?"

"Shit," Clark mumbled, the word muffled by the hand he scrubbed over his face. With everything going on in Metropolis, he hadn't given more than an afterthought to his mother, or the fact that she would be aware of his troubles from the news.

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Rick growled, gesticulating with his fork.

"Says the sailor," Clark said, helping himself to the omelet his uncle had put out on a plate for him.

"Not the point."

Clark chewed a moment. "Have you talked to Ma?"

"I called her this morning when I noticed you were in your bedroom."

"Is she okay?"

"She's rehearsing the earful she's going to give you over this, but she's just fine."

Clark sighed, and they ate in silence for a few minutes.

"I'm sorry I didn't call you. It's been... busy."

"It's been hell, Clark. You mean to say, it's been hell."

"Yes, well, I was worried you were going to start a quarter jar if I kept the language up."

Rick just chuckled.

After breakfast, the two Kents had shared a cab to the hospital. Rick and Jason had stayed with Lois all day while Clark had gone to the _Daily Planet_. There had been a few reporters in the cubicles, sitting at their computers looking lost, and half the section editors had been pacing their offices. While the newspaper wasn't in any serious danger of losing subscriptions, they were half a week away from the accountants publishing an issue themselves for the sheer sake of getting the advertisers to stop calling in complaints.

Rick stayed at Clark's apartment, watching Jason, getting him to and from school, helping with homework, bringing him to visit Lois. Meanwhile, Clark shouldered the _Daily Planet_, calling reporters and editors back into the office, setting them to their beats, creating temporary solutions with the publishers and accountants and any number of others that would get the paper running for the time being, and he returned to the skies as Superman. Lois was under strict orders to stay in bed and recover, but she tried to get Clark to sign her out every time he accompanied Rick and Jason to visit.

It took several weeks to close the official investigation into the events over Christmas, or at least finish off the parts that involved Lois and Clark.

They gave their official statements from Lois's room in the hospital, while Jason was at school. Henderson had sat with them, tape recorder on an empty chair, and asked them the appropriate questions. Then the tape recorder had been put away, and the explanations had truly begun.

"I will tell you what I know, then you are sure as _hell_ going to tell me what happened," Henderson said, looking between the pair of them, eyes steely.

"Fair enough," Clark said.

Four hours later, Henderson was near enough to satisfied that he let them escape his questions. Clark took a flight around the world, trying not to think about the lab results Bruce had produced, malicious little factoids that labeled his son Hybrid 1 and himself a humanoid non-terrestrial being (and occasionally, in Luthor's handwriting, a U.F.O.—'unwanted flying object').

There would be investigations into the identities of the dead thugs, forensic investigation into the remains of the lab, etc. but Clark washed his hands of it after he'd answered all of Henderson's questions ("Just what were these guys _really_ after?" being his most urgent); he didn't need the reminder. He would read the official reports when Henderson's men finished, and that was enough. He assigned Johnny Greneveld, one of the junior City beat reporters with whom he hadn't had much association since his return, to the story and refused point-blank to change his mind when Lois complained.

-

"I feel like an idiot," she whispered to Clark on the ride up to the bullpen after her release from the hospital in the second week of January.

"Well, you look great," he assured her.

She was confined to flats until she was more recovered from her injury, though her doctors had given the impression that they'd rather she wore running shoes for the rest of her life. Lois wouldn't hear of it, though. Clark had, at least, talked her into gel insoles. As it was, she carried a shiny black cane topped in a faux ivory knob which made her limp a bit less pronounced.

She blushed crimson when her colleagues gave her a standing ovation as she made her way to her desk.

-

The platinum ring on Lois's finger set with three sapphires went mostly unnoticed amid the upheaval, but Martha Kent noticed it when she finally managed to extricate herself from Smallville. The small engagement party—with Rick, Martha, the Troupes, and Lois's parents—was a break from reality at the end of January. The General's frowning and obvious disapproval was only slightly alleviated by Clark's recent obviously outstanding behavior and the fact that he had an uncle in the service. Martha and Ella got along swimmingly, at least.

They escaped any questions about Lois's refusal to drink alcoholic beverages by Jason's presence. It was a happily dodged bullet.

The party concluded, for Lois, Clark and Jason, at least, with a visit to Perry's grave.

The graveyard was a sprawling plot of land surrounded by an imposing iron fence, the rows of gravestones only interrupted by solitary oak trees, old and gnarled and entirely suited to the cemetery.

They walked through the graveyard, their destination obvious—while recent snowfall had hidden the disturbed earth, the new stone stood out among the weathered obelisks.

"It doesn't do him justice," Lois sighed, looking at the marker. It was very plain compared to others in the cemetery, but in that it suited the former Editor. It was engraved with his significant dates below his name, and a carving of the famous _Daily Planet _globe.

"It's unlikely anything ever will be able to," Clark agreed, thinking of the obituary he'd written. Words hadn't been enough. Nothing had.

They stood there for almost a half an hour, Clark with his arm across Lois's shoulders, holding her tight to his side as she cried. Jason, enjoying his imperviousness to the cold, wandered between the graves, clearing away snow and inspecting the epitaphs.

Rick and Martha returned to their respective homes less than a week after the party. Lois and Clark needed to time to stabilize themselves without the, much appreciated, training wheels of helpful family. Clark more-or-less moved into Lois's apartment, going back to his own only when he returned from being Superman more of a mess than he wanted to get on Lois's furniture and as an excuse to her neighbors for his in-and-out hours.

-

By Valentine's Day, Clark had been allowed to remove 'Acting Editor-in-Chief' from his title and slip back into his senior City reporter roll, where his absences were much easier to pass off unnoticed. Alice cleaned out Perry's office in a single tearful afternoon, and Lois moved in the next day, though she didn't begin marking the office as her own until the official-ness of it all had settled on her in the form of the updated paint on the glass door: _Lois Lane, Editor-in-Chief_ in white, inarguable letters.

-

March dawned clear and crisp, marking a rather sudden return to normality. The _Planet_ was fully functioning under the new leadership. The staff was used to seeing Lois's cane and had learned to flinch at the _clack-clack-thip_ of her heels (which she had begun wearing no matter how disapprovingly Clark arranged his eyebrows) and cane on the floor as she moved to chastise somebody over deadlines or content. Some of them called her House. Any potential jokes about the fact that she was the first female editor-in-chief of the _Daily Planet_ in history were silenced in the wake of her glare, and her quiet disapproval and disappointment when they didn't measure up to her standards.

The only outstanding issue was Jimmy. He avoided Lois and Clark at all costs. Arriving for work and doing his job just as well as he always had, but he didn't meet their eyes, ignored any attempts at conversation, and disappeared more surely than Clark on the way to a crisis at the end of every day. Until March, there was no time for Lois or Clark to corner him, to talk to him, to find out _what the hell_ was the matter. It ate at them as time passed.

Finally, Clark managed to catch him on the roof of the _Daily Planet_. It was March 12; he'd officially been back on Earth for a year. His life had been completely restructured.

Jimmy hadn't more than glanced at him in almost three months. The tension between the three of them, Lois, Clark and Jimmy, was beginning to affect the work dynamic at the _Planet_, especially seeing as how Jimmy had always worked closely with the Lane-Kent team, and most had expected that to carry over even after Lois rose to the expected Editor's chair, all circumstances aside, and it was just the Kent portion of the team covering City.

The roof was the employees' escape. It was where Lois went to smoke or resist the temptation to smoke, where Gil—who was still in the hospital, the gunshot wound having gotten infected—to call his wife, where Jimmy went to center himself after photographing a particularly horrific event, where Cat Grant went to flirt information out of her contacts over the phone, where Clark went when he told everybody else he'd left his stove on or forgotten to let his cat out. Generally, when somebody made it clear they were going up to the roof for some private time, they were left alone.

Jimmy had been using the roof a lot since Christmas. Before March, Clark hadn't had the time or energy, though he hated to admit it, to follow him.

It was twilight. The last rays of the setting sun still twined around the skyscrapers of Metropolis, giving everything a slightly ethereal, otherworldly tinge. Jimmy stood near the westernmost ledge, arms folded across his chest, scowling out at the city. Clark couldn't think of a single time in the past that he'd seen Jimmy Olson scowl.

Clark cleared his throat.

"I came up here to be alone," Jimmy said, sounding as though he was grinding his teeth.

"We need to talk, Jim."

"Oh, now we do?" Jimmy asked, spinning around, glaring, practically snarling. Clark blinked. "Does now work for you? Are you sure?"

"Jimmy…"

"Don't even!"

"I'm sorry, Jimmy."

"You're sorry? For what?" his chest was heaving, Clark could hear his heart racing in his agitation. He wasn't sure what to say. "You had your laughs and you made it perfectly clear you're done with me. What're you sorry for, _Clark_? Sorry I found out?"

"What?"

"I thought we were friends. I thought you were my _best_ friend. The geeks at the _Planet_, you know? We've gotta stick together. Jimmy Olson, the perpetual teenager, the Photo Editor who's really just the gofer intern like back when he was hired, and CK, the big guy who stutters and trips over everything," Jimmy sneered, taking a few stomping steps closer to Clark, arms waving in his livid gesticulation. "And you've really just been mocking me this whole time, haven't you? You and Lois—Lois, the coolest of the cool, the cream of the crop, top reporter; famous. I thought it was a rather nice trick, one won for the little guy, you and her getting together. Joke's on me, huh?"

"Nobody was mocking you, Jim," Clark said earnestly.

"Well what else could you have been doing?" The words seemed torn from Jimmy's throat, but it was Clark who felt the pain of them. "I thought you were my friend. I thought we really knew each other. But I guess not.

"_Superman_ and _Lois Lane_, with me tagging along, like some puppy at your heels. You let me go on about how _awesome _I thought you were, _commiserating _that we would never be so _cool _as _you_! And you both knew it! What else _could_ you be doing?

"I know I'm supposed to be nice, gullible, dependable Jimmy, but nobody likes to be played for the fool. Not even me."

"I'm not sorry you found out, Jimmy," Clark said as calmly as he could, taking off his glasses, folding them slowly and putting them in his breast pocket. Jimmy followed the movement with rapt attention before his eyes snapped to Clark's face, narrowed and studying, confirming. "I'm sorry you found out the way you did, and I'm sorry I haven't been able to talk to you until now. I'm sorry that you got kidnapped because of the secrets I've had to keep over the years, and that Perry is dead because of them.

"I don't know what got you thinking that Lois and I were mocking you in any way. You _know_ me, Jimmy. You're one of my best friends. I wouldn't do that. _Lois_ wouldn't do that."

"If I'm 'one of your best friends,'" Jimmy asked, shaping the air quotes with his fingers, anger flashing in his eyes, "then why didn't you just tell me? Didn't you trust me? Did you think I would go public with your secret? How can you call me a friend if you don't trust me?"

"It's not a matter of trust, Jimmy," Clark said, stepping closer, imploring. By the sound of his heart rate, Jimmy had settled down somewhat, but he'd moved from angry into hurt, and it wasn't inspiring much confidence. "I've never told _anybody_ my secrets," he held out a hand when Jimmy cocked his head, straightening his shoulders and preparing to argue the point. "Lois suspected and strong-armed me into admitting it in Niagara Falls. Jason, somehow, just _knew_. Henderson found my fingerprints on evidence and put the pieces together."

Jimmy glowered, but he looked almost somewhat appeased.

"It's not something I tell people, Jim. It's not that I don't trust you or that you aren't my friend, but people who know my secrets are in more danger than those who don't. I don't want anybody to have to cover for me or feel obligated. All it does is get people hurt… or killed."

"Did Perry know?"

"No, he didn't," Clark sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and squeezing his eyes shut. "He suspected, though, I'm sure. It's impossible he didn't, considering the looks he was always giving me."

"Seems people die whether they know about you or not."

Clark paused a moment, looking at his friend. His arms were at his sides now and he wasn't glaring anymore. He looked tired and much older than Clark remembered him looking in the past. Clark couldn't help but _feel_ older than he'd been before.

"I know."

Clark couldn't look him in the eye anymore; he turned to look out over the city, feeling the weight of responsibility press down on him.

"If I thought it would help if I left again, if that would make you all safer, I would, in an instant. I would go back to Kansas, I would help out on the farm, I wouldn't maintain any personal ties. But it wouldn't help. I have responsibilities here, to Lois and Jason, to the _Daily Planet_, to Metropolis. I've made promises that I intend to keep—"

"I saw Lois wearing an engagement ring."

"Yes."

"And Jason is really your son? Biologically?"

"Yes."

They were quiet for a moment. Clark still couldn't meet Jimmy's eyes, but he knew the younger man was looking him over, intensely, measuring him.

"I want an explanation." Clark turned his head sharply, looking at his friend. The tone wasn't nearly as hostile as it had been the moment before, but it was no less demanding. "I want to know why the _hell_ I was locked in a freezing cold basement and where all that sword fighting came from."

"Luthor funded the Boss, hired him for research. To collect samples, to compare and contrast human biology to Kryptonian biology," Clark said after a moment, just loud enough that Jimmy would be able to hear him.

"Why kidnap Jason, then; why not just kidnap you?"

"Luthor knew Jason was half Kryptonian. The Boss is medically qualified and well known for his hatred of the extra terrestrial. He thought Jason was an abomination, wanted to study him like a lab rat," he couldn't help the vehemence in his tone or the furious look on his face, no matter that it stirred Jimmy into fidgeting from nervousness at the sight of his expression. "They chose to incapacitate, or so they hoped, the older and stronger in favor of the younger."

"Is Jason okay?"

"Physically, he is perfectly fine. Better than he has been in the past, even," Clark admitted, forcing himself to calm down. Thinking about their flights above the clouds, out of sight, that had become part of their nightly routine helped. "He has all the _abilities _I do now, though. It's… a lot for a kid to deal with so young."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I wasn't _born_ with super-human abilities. They came over time. I crash-landed in Kansas when I was about three years old and I didn't really begin manifesting anything unusual until I'd had time in the sunlight. I was thirteen before I could levitate, let alone fly.

"Luthor put kryptonite dust directly into Jason's lungs. It would've killed him. I had to take him to the Fortress and the only treatment to save him also exposed him to enough sunlight to activate his Kryptonian genes. He's still working on learning to read, but he can fly, he can see through things. If he gets angry, he might set things on fire with his eyes. He has everything I have to worry about put on him and he's only six!"

"Everything you have to worry about?"

"I'm more solid that stone, Jimmy," Clark said bluntly, turning to look at his friend. Jimmy gave him a blank look. Clark picked up a few of the larger pebbles from the rooftop and pressed them to dust between his thumb and index finger. "If I brush past someone and forget to give a little, they could dislocate a shoulder. If I hug Lois too tight, I could crush her ribcage without even noticing. I have to slow down when I'm flying so that the whiplash of catching somebody doesn't break them in half.

"Now imagine Jason having to think of all those things one day when he didn't the last, simply because of a light treatment to save his life," Clark said, looking out over the city again. _Luthor took away his childhood with that kryptonite dust_, he thought bitterly, but voicing it wouldn't change anything. "I had all of puberty to learn to control things as they came upon me one at a time, he didn't even get that."

"He's a strong kid," Jimmy said, sounding a bit more confident than he had before. Clark glanced over at him, catching a slight smirk on the photographer's face for the pun. "He's got quite a few good people looking out for him. He'll make it through."

"Thanks, Jimmy," Clark said, wondering if that meant he was forgiven for not bringing Jimmy in the loop, per se. He wasn't sure where they stood.

"And the sword fighting? Where did that come from? And since when do you know Bruce Wayne?"

"Tibet," Clark said, scrubbing a tired hand over his face, glad for the absence of his glasses. "I spent awhile in Tibet with an _organization_ called the League of Shadows."

Jimmy was silent a moment before saying, "I've heard of them. They're terrorists."

"I didn't know that, exactly, when I walked through the front doors to their Temple. They were ninjas. Fascinating people—I was young, I was trying to study humanity by traveling the globe over. By the time I figured out what was really going on, I'd gotten in pretty deep. I was supposed to be their Master of Assassins."

"Superman the Master of Assassins for the League of Shadows," Jim said, shaking his head. Clark smirked, but his heart wasn't in it.

"I met Bruce in the Temple; it was during the time when he was supposed to be dead. He was going through his misspent-youth phase and so was I. We had a lot in common, really… There are just some things you can't _not_ be friends after experiencing together."

"And training to be terrorist ninjas is one of those things, hm?"

Clark, despite his intentions and the seriousness of the conversation, burst out laughing. "Yes, I suppose it is."

_A/N: This chapter was removed and reposted with modifications because it was rather awful last time. I'm still not happy with it, but it's closer than it was and I've dawdled over it too long. _

_And I must ask for your pardon with the House reference, I couldn't help it. (If you don't know anything about House—it's a show about a sarcastic, antisocial, brilliant doctor, named Greg House, who walks with a cane. Hugh Laurie, who plays House, would've been cast, probably, as Perry White in SR if Bryan Singer hadn't decided he'd rather have him play House.)_


	60. Chapter 60

Lois eased into the steaming water, unable, unwilling at that, to hold in her sigh. Her life had been one thing after the other since Christmas and it was only just settling down, now the middle of March.

She'd returned to work propped up by a nearly elegant cane (bought by Lucy for the sake of not making her use the ugly, metallic, hospital-issue thing), wearing flats (which made her feel smaller than usual, especially walking next to Clark), and sitting in Perry's office. To call that first day an emotional challenge would be like saying it would only be 'fairly difficult' to chop down an oak tree with her fancy cane.

The fact that she'd _had_ to get her work done and _had_ to keep the colleagues that were now her employees on task had gotten her through the first weeks. Having Clark around had helped, too. He'd been busy with his own things, certainly—presenting an 'all is well' façade as Superman, for one, as well as assuring his relatives he was really alright, keeping _her_ relatives from glaring at him too much without being so out of character that they got curious, and establishing a relationship with _New York Times_ reporter Wolfgang Turner.

Clark had proposed to her in this tub. She'd returned home to find the bathtub full of perfectly warm water with lavender essential oil on the surface, the ledge of the tub, the surfaces of the toilet and sink, and spots of the floor all playing host to white candles. She'd almost cried with relief when Clark had helped her undress and sink into the steaming water. There had only been the vaguest hint of romance as he massaged the tender, aching muscles of her healing leg, then the rest of her. The man could give a massage.

"Where's Jason?" she'd asked at long last, a last-ditch attempt to set her stirring arousal aside for propriety's sake.

"He's in Kansas for the evening."

"Why?" she'd finally opened her eyes, stared at him. He was wearing blue jeans and a faded black t-shirt, no glasses in sight. He'd looked as completely relaxed as she'd felt, lying there in the tub, him watching her, his fingers caressing.

"Because I have something important to ask you."

The ring had come in the classic little black velvet box, just like Richard's, but Richard's proposal hadn't even crossed her mind. It was just Clark, crouching beside her bathtub after he'd set aside so much of his afternoon to prepare her for the first evening of anywhere near relaxation in _so _many months, holding the perfect ring, so tiny resting on the palm of his huge hand after he took it out of the box.

He'd carried her, dripping, to her bedroom and made love to her, carefully, for the first time since they'd conceived. Her skin crackled with that odd, unnamable tingling that she felt whenever she was pressed close to him. She still didn't know what it was, but she liked it.

When they'd woken the next morning, they'd had several lazy hours together, interrupted only twice by cries for Superman's aid. He'd brought her breakfast in bed complete the non-caffeinated tea she'd developed a taste for during her pregnancy with Jason, and they'd made love again. Before he'd left to get Jason, though, they made a rather important decision: Superman would appear to sever all ties with Lois Lane.

To most, it would appear that Clark Kent had finally won out against his greatest competition for Lois's heart, sending the superhero to the other paper in a fit of pique. They could think whatever they wanted. The simple fact was that it was too risky for Lois to continue as his press contact, not only because it drew attention to her, but because it would be a major conflict of interest when they were married. No matter that the only people who knew Clark Kent was Superman were family members, close to the family, or dead, they didn't want to risk the information eventually leaking and putting both Lois and Clark's entire journalistic careers at risk.

Wolfgang Turner was the crusty middle-aged _New York Times_ version of Lois Lane. He'd waved off several promotions in favor of keeping his desk on the City beat, though he didn't seek as many stories as he once had, not since his only son died when the Towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. His wife had been taken by breast cancer twelve years previously, leaving him alone to his work. Unlike a great number of people affected by various crises in Clark's absence from Earth, Turner was not bitter towards Superman. He mourned his son, he held onto the happy memories, just like with his wife, and he missed them both, but he tried to make the best of the time God had given him, even if that time was without the people he held closest to his heart.

Lois wasn't sure if Clark sympathized with his new press contact, or what anecdotes passed between them that led to the easy camaraderie Clark expressed when he spoke of meetings with 'Wolfgang.'

"How do you feel?" Clark asked, jerking her from her ruminations. She smiled, opening her eyes to look up at her fiancé in his spandex Suit, cape and all, looking very out of place in the bathroom.

"I'm sore all over," she admitted. He frowned at her, eyes flickering across her body, x-raying through her layers of flesh in a decidedly passion-killing way, examining her for fragility.

Her doctors continued to be surprised at how well her leg was healing. She blamed it on the fact that she spent several hours a day wrapped in the arms of somebody invulnerable and perhaps that invulnerability was catching. Or perhaps it was the fetus growing in her womb—at almost six months, she was a tight sweater away from the more tactless _Planet _employees simply blurting out what were only suspicions as of yet—a child that would one day be invulnerable, that was helping her out. Either way, her physical therapy wasn't nearly so challenging as the pamphlets had prepared her for it to be, not that she was complaining.

But she was sore. Her feet hurt, her knees hurt, her hips hurt. Her leg hurt even though the wounds themselves were well and truly healed over. Her back hurt both from the new distribution of weight and walking with the cane. Her wrist hurt from using the cane. Her breasts were ridiculously sensitive, and not in a good way either.

"Anything I can do?"

She had to smile at him again. The office saw Clark as a stuttering puppy, tripping over his feet in his pursuit of her, and the world saw Superman was the aloof but benevolent savior. And here he was in her bathroom, both of them wrapped in one. He was a puppy, prepared to trip over his cape to fulfill her every whim, and he was the benevolent savior, ready to fly halfway around the world when she craved something in the early hours of the morning.

When she thought of all the things she had to get done—Perry had made it look _so easy_—and all the things Clark had to get done—he made it look easy, too—she was constantly flabbergasted at the time he was willing to cut out of his own schedule to do things for her. If she asked for a foot rub, he would crouch down at a moment's notice. If she asked for a pickle, he'd be at the fridge in half a second wondering if she wanted sweet or dill and if she needed the peanut butter too.

"Stay with me always," she said, reaching out and weaving her fingers through his, relaxing her head back against the tub and closing her eyes. She could tell he was using his heat vision on the water; it heated gradually, ebbing around her ever so slightly as the hot and cold water followed the laws of physics.

"Always," he echoed, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

* * *

_A/N: Let it be noted that chapter 59 was deleted and reposted with changes (hopefully it's better than it was before)_

_thnx_


	61. Chapter 61

Gil O'Patrick died on a Wednesday. The funeral services were held the following Saturday, attended by nearly every member of the _Daily Planet_ staff.

"Why is it that everybody's dying since I was put in charge?" Lois lamented after the funeral, sitting in Perry's old office with Clark, both dressed in black.

"It's not your fault, Lois," Clark reminded her, getting a look in return.

"It's not your fault, either, Clark."

He just shrugged and her eyes narrowed to a glare.

"Clark. Lex Luthor was a crazy shit out to get you just for being you. There's nothing you could have done," she reminded him. He didn't meet her eyes, earning him another glare.

Lois was gearing up to dress him down—and he wasn't entirely uncertain he didn't need to hear it—when the phone rang. She gave him a "we'll be talking later" look and picked up.

"Lois Lane."

Clark didn't make a habit of listening in to other peoples' telephone conversations, especially not Lois', but the look on her face after just a few moments of speech on the part of whoever was calling had him leaning forward, focusing on the voice in the receiver, but Lois hung up before he had concentrated on it.

"What is it?" he asked, half out of his chair, hands out on her desk. "Lois. What's wrong?"

"Momma collapsed. The General found her on the kitchen floor when he got back from the supermarket this afternoon. They think it was a stroke," she said in a suspicious monotone.

Met. General was full of sounds—heart monitors beeping, machines running, TVs playing the news, intercoms crackling, families pacing waiting rooms, the scratch of pens across paper as doctors and nurses filled out charts, hundreds of hearts beating, a handful of hearts ceasing to beat, people grieving. He couldn't find Ella Lane among the static. He didn't know all her sounds.

"Let's go," he said, walking around the desk and helping her to her feet. She was confused.

"Clark, we've got an issue to put out. The staff took the morning off to go to the funeral. There's no way we can just walk out—"

"Lois, if it was Jimmy's mom that was in the hospital, what would you tell him to do?"

"I'd… send him to the hospital, but that's not the—"

"Yes, Lois. It's just the same."

"I'm the Editor-in-Chief!"

"You're going on maternity leave in three days. Gerald VanNevel is already in Metropolis. I will call him while we're on our way, I'm sure he'd love a head start on paychecks."

"Clark, this isn't the way things are supposed to work—!"

_A/N: So I have no idea how the _Daily Planet_ (or any other newspaper) would deal with the editor-in-chief going on maternity leave; therefore, I'm making it up as I go. (yay!) _

_In other news, I apologize for the wait between chapters and the brevity of this update; real life happened. _


	62. Chapter 62

The last thing the bullpen saw of Lois Lane for several months was red-rimmed eyes, a precursor to tears where she was concerned, as Clark led her out. Gerald VanNevel, Assistant Editor of _The Daily Planet: London_, arrived two hours later, explained that Lois' mother was in the hospital and she was starting her leave early, and asked that they all get back to work.

Nobody really liked Gerald very much.

First off, he insisted they all gather in the conference room so that he could introduce himself. He preferred they call him Gerald. Mr. VanNevel was his father, he said. And only his wife was allowed to call him Gerry. He didn't wear a wedding band.

Second, he spoke with his eyebrows the way some people spoke with their hands. Jimmy found himself watching the eyebrows with an alarming sort of fascination. They moved independently of one another, hardly ever synchronizing. It was very distracting.

And then there was the fact that Gerald had no charisma to speak of. At least not compared to what the staff was used to seeing in the editor-in-chief. He led the bullpen in a making suggestions sort of way, trying to get everybody to like him but really only managing to send half the senior staff into conniptions when the junior staff did everything their way because they could get away with it, and most of it had to be fixed before it could go to print.

Nobody really liked Gerald very much.

- - -

Ella Lane was in the stroke unit at Met. General. Her husband was pacing the waiting room and swearing under his breath when Lois and Clark arrived—they'd taken a taxi, as they would've been unable to explain how they'd arrived minutes after they'd been called from across town. Lucy arrived within the hour, assuring Lois and Clark that Ron was going to pick Jason up from school when he picked up the girls.

Not too long after Lucy had fallen silent, a nurse showed them to Ella's room. She was still unconscious, they explained. There was no telling how long she'd been on the floor before the General had called the ambulance and gotten her to the hospital, but the clot that had caused the stroke had responded immediately to the medicine. Her CT scans were promising; it was a waiting game.

None of the Lanes had ever been good at waiting, especially when Ella wasn't pursing her lips at them to encourage patience.

Clark stood behind the lumpy chair in which Lois sat, watching the room, listening around them. The doctors all had smiles on their faces when they came through to check, which he hoped was a good sign. Lois was a nervous wreck—no matter how difficult things had been with her father, she'd always gotten along with her mother.

The General was up and down, pacing a few circuits of the room then returning to his chair on the opposite side of the bed from Lois, next to Lucy. He'd left off swearing under his breath, exchanging it for glaring at the floor and mattress, wherever his eyes fell.

Lucy cried softly, holding her mother's hand.

- - -

Ron arrived late in the day with the children. Jason immediately climbed into Lois' lap and wrapped his arms around her neck. It seemed to be just what she needed—she released a flood of tears, clinging to Clark's hand. It was over as quickly as it had begun, though.

"Mommy's okay, Jason honey. Sorry about that."

- - -

Clark left at sundown. He needed to return to the bullpen, straighten his things out and patch together his articles before deadline. He was just lucky he'd already done the interviews and only needed to write the pieces.

The moment the elevator doors opened he knew it was going to be a very long week. The bullpen was still full despite the late hour. Section editors were screaming from their office doors, writers were yelling at photographers, photographers were yelling at writers, the interns looked terrified. Gerald was holed up in Lois' office examining nearly blank pages of layout.

Four hours to deadline.

Clark sent a silent prayer to any deity that was listening, hoping for a quiet night of crime, before making a pit-stop in the bathroom to remove the Suit from beneath his clothes so that he would be able to roll his sleeves up properly.

It took him twenty minutes in his office to finish off his articles, and two minutes logging into the _Planet_'s network to get a look at the layout. Gerald seemed to know what he was doing, but he was horribly slow. He'd been the Assistant Editor-in-Chief in London for two years and, somehow unsurprisingly, the London office had been more than happy to ship him over to Metropolis when recently promoted Assistant Editor-in-Chief had needed maternity leave and the new Assistant Editor hadn't had long enough in his position to take over.

"Jimmy Olson, could you c'mere, please?" Gerald called from his office door, hardly making himself heard over the chaos.

Clark proceeded to listen in on the most worthless debate over the merits of camera angles he'd ever heard. Jimmy's pulse was ratcheting up every second he wasted talking to Gerald. Clark was ready to pull his own hair out.

_Did they seriously send us an idiot? Does he not realize that this it the _Daily Planet _and the clock is ticking and we have no front page!? How did this guy get to Assistant Editor in London?_

He entertained the notion of calling Lois for a whole second.

A bit more searching in the network folders revealed that most of the writers had their copy turned in—he sent them home. They were only adding to the chaos and hysteria by sticking around. Most of the photographers were shooed out, too, leaving the editors and junior writers, as well as a few of the senior staff who were dedicated enough to stick around and hammer things out.

The coffee flowed.

Pages took shape. Copy editors stopped hyperventilating and began debating comma placement. Section editors stopped screaming and started laying out their pages. Gerald smiled benignly from his office as if he had had anything to do with it.

"If this is how this guy works," Jimmy said, slouching back in his chair as they hit deadline for sending the paper to print, "I'm taking a leave of absence until Lois gives birth."

"Hear, hear," Elena Buckingham, A&E section editor, sighed, her head thumping down on her desk—the three of them had gathered during the last push, matching film festival photographs up with captions on the page in lieu of an article whose writer had had something close to a nervous breakdown and been sent home shortly after Clark had returned to the bullpen.

Clark was careful not to mention any of the chaos to Lois when he returned to the hospital in the wee hours of the morning with a change of clothes for her and a warm breakfast.

"How did it go last night?"

"Oh, you know. The new guy has his own system, not everybody liked it. Things came together on time. It's the _Daily Planet_, after all; we're kind of good at what we do," he smirked as she rolled her eyes at him. "How's your mom doing?"

"Good, I think," she said, chewing her thumb nail as she looked through the glass in the door at the figure of her mother. The General was asleep in his chair beside the bed. Lucy and Ron had taken all the kids to there house sometime before midnight. "She woke up awhile after you left. She didn't say anything, but the doctors said that that's okay. They did more scans."

"That's good."

He didn't really know what else to say.

- - - - - -

Jason was enjoying the variety in his life, even if it was confusing.

He spent his days at school, just like he normally would, but he never knew what would be going on when he left in the afternoons. Sometimes, Uncle Ron would pick him up, sometimes it was Dad. Usually, he went straight to the hospital to visit Grandma Ella. She was very sick and had to stay at the hospital to get better, and she couldn't even talk. But she was going to be okay.

Sometimes, he would have dinner at the hospital with everybody, but sometimes he, Mom and Dad would go home to Dad's apartment and eat there. Other times, Dad would take him to Grandma Martha's for dinner and he would stay there and do his homework while Mom was at the hospital with Grandma Ella and Dad was being Superman. Sometimes, he would stay at the hospital with Mom and do homework there after dinner and then Uncle Ron would take him to his house and he would sleep on the pull-out bed in the computer room.

Grandma Ella began getting better after two weeks, though, and things got more normal. Mom, General Grandpa and Aunt Lucy weren't always at the hospital anymore. They visited a lot, but only General Grandpa still slept there.

Mom was a lot less worried, which made Dad a lot less worried. They had him draw pictures to decorate Grandma Ella's hospital room, which seemed like a weird thing to do when they said she would be going home soon because she was getting a lot better.

Grown-ups could be so weird.

At least nobody had tried to kidnap him or put kryptonite in his inhalers recently.


	63. Chapter 63

"I've got an appointment to keep, then I'm going to get something to eat," Lois said after checking her watch again. She had ten minutes to get to the maternity ward at Met. General for her ultrasound. "I'll be back in a little bit."

The General and Ella were both asleep, but Lucy acknowledged the statement with a sleepy, distracted nod, resituating herself in the chair by the bed and glancing at their parents before directing her eyes back to a magazine full of knitting patterns.

Lois smiled to herself over the sheer domestication of her little sister as she made her way through the quiet halls. It was the first appointment of the day, leaving the halls empty but for a few tired-looking nurses making the first rounds of their shifts. That made it all the easier to let Clark in from a roof-access stairwell without raising any eyebrows.

The ultrasound technician was a middle-aged woman with a cheery disposition, which only served to peeve Lois: The gel was cold on her stomach; her mother was recovering from a stroke; it was early in the morning and she hadn't had a proper cup of coffee in months.

Clark was predictably chipper, which made things easier for the technician. All Lois had to do was lie still and glare at the pair of them as they made light conversation.

Most of her anger ebbed when the quick sound of a heartbeat filled the room. Clark had an unbearably smug look on his face—he'd been whispering about the baby's heartbeat for weeks. Lois had to smile. He'd been talking like he was the first guy to ever procreate (Jimmy had called her twice from the _Planet_ to congratulate her on so firmly securing Clark's position as bullpen geek).

It made her nostalgic for when she was pregnant with Jason. Richard had been very supportive, but she'd made most of her first checkups with Lucy. Lucy had introduced her to Dr. Elaine Port, who had been amazing, particularly when dealing with Lois' short fuse. Her patience through Lois' panic over Jason's bronchial problems from the start was a testament to her profession.

"Clark, you are smiling like an idiot," Lois informed him as they left the ward. After Lois had got what felt like less than half the goop off her belly with a paper towel, they had listened to a steady stream of assurances that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the baby; everything was just where it was supposed to be. Clark had somehow managed to smile wider. Lois was fairly certain his molars were on display.

"I'm happy."

"Well, good," she said, unable to fault him that. It made her rather happy, herself. Her mood turning up for a change, she looped her hand into Clark's arm as they walked.

They made it through a cafeteria brunch before the TV alerted them to a hostage situation in progress at the US embassy in Italy and Clark kissed her goodbye. Lois stayed where she was, watching him disappear down the side hall and reappear in red and blue on the TV in Italy only a minute later.

Lucy found her still sitting at their table for two tucked off to the side of the cafeteria ten minutes later.

"There you are."

"Oh, hi," Lois said, looking up at her little sister's face and suddenly feeling guilty. She'd been gone for almost two hours.

"Oh, hi," Lucy mimed, taking the seek Clark had vacated, rolling her eyes. "What have you been up to? The food down here isn't _that _good."

"Mostly sitting." She glanced at the TV, noting that the situation at the embassy was still underway.

"You're just itching to get in there and report on things, aren't you?" Lucy chuckled, noting where Lois's eyes had strayed to.

Lois just shrugged. She was feeling rather put out that Clark had had to leave so soon; it felt as though she didn't get to spend much time with him. She blamed it on the hormones. She was Lois Lane, after all. Independent. Needing no man to keep her company in the hospital cafeteria. Mad Dog Lane, they called her.

"What's that?"

"Hm?"

Lois moved too slow, and Lucy snagged the ultrasound photo from beside the tray on the table between them.

"You didn't tell me you had an appointment—is that where you went this morning?"

"I did tell you I had an appointment," Lois said in her own defense.

"When?" Lucy replied skeptically, raising her eyebrows.

"Right before I left."

"You mean when I was practically asleep?"

Lois began gnawing a thumb nail as she worked not to make eye contact.

"I thought so." Lois glanced at her sister's face and wasn't surprised to see a familiar exasperated look in place.

"It was all good news, though. Everything looked fine," Lois said, trying to steer them away from the awkwardness.

"It's adorable," Lucy said, turning the picture this way and that. Lois had to laugh.

"I appreciate your tact." She had a particularly vivid memory of getting punched in the shoulder rather hard after her 'It looks like an alien' comment concerning an ultrasound of Lucy's first.

"I did have a shining example of what _not_ to do."

"Thanks."

"Anytime."

They sat together for another moment, Lois's eyes making their way back to the TV, where she could see Clark negotiating with a tall man in a charcoal suit holding a gun.

"You're holding a torch for him, aren't you?" Lucy asked in such a soft, unobtrusive voice that Lois answered before she realized what she was saying to whom.

"I think that's implied in the fact that I'm carrying his child," she said, her tone sarcastic, then, "Oh, shit!"

"Lois!" Lucy hissed in a loud whisper, outraged.

"Um, that is, I _meant _to say…" Lois began, but couldn't think of a way to talk her way out of it, not to Lucy. Her words had been perfectly audible, and it was clear she had been thinking about the Blue Boy Scout currently featured on the TV… "I was thinking about Clark?"

"You were not," Lucy hissed, glaring disapprovingly and looking as though she might stamp her foot any second. She lowered her voice further before speaking. "Now just what are you saying, Lois?" she asked, though Lois was fairly certain it wasn't the matter in question any longer. "This," Lucy set the ultrasound photo on the table, indicating the black and white baby that looked as though it were mostly skull at the moment, "is _Superman's child_?"

"This," Lois said, rubbing her swollen belly, "is _Clark_'s child, Lucy."

"I heard what you said, Lois," Lucy said sharply. "You can't take it back now. What the hell are you thinking?"

Lois bit her lip. Her mind had gone blank. She and Clark hadn't had time to sit down and talk about what they'd do if Lois's family, or Ben Hubbard for that matter, found out that Clark was Superman. There was no contingency plan, no fallback story.

"He's not _human_, Lois," Lucy whispered. She was leaning in over the table slightly, eyes wide and honest. "I mean, he's great. He's saved a hundred thousand lives. He's made your career amazing. But… when it comes down to it…"

"Luce," Lois said when her sister fell silent, "humanity is compassion and forgiveness in the most cheesy and cliché way possible. He is just like any other man, "she couldn't help but wink, noticing her sister's faint blush, "he just happens to be able to fly."

"And shoot lasers out of his eyes," Lucy replied, pulling her chair around so that she was sitting closer to Lois, lowering her voice further. "How can it work? The child could really hurt you," she said, taking the ultrasound photo and holding it between them, looking at it, plainly wondering how anything so small and normal-looking could be half-alien, could shoot lasers out of its eyes and bend steel with its bare hands. "One good kick to the bladder by any baby can send a mother to the bathroom in a hurry, but a good kick to your bladder and… I don't want to think about the damage that kind of strength could do."

"I was fine with Jason," Lois said, then slapped her hand to her mouth. Lucy sat up straighter in her shock, gaping.

"What!"

"Sh! I can't believe I just said that…!"

"Lois!" Lucy said, her voice back to a whisper. "You can't be serious! First you said he was Richard's, then you said he was Clark's, and all this time…"

"It's not like that!" Lois said quickly, not liking the censure she saw in her sister's eyes. "Clark knows."

"What do you mean 'Clark knows'?" she asked sharply.

"I mean he knows about me and Superman. He knew about Jason before Richard did."

"He's been telling everybody that Jason is his. Biologically."

"He and Superman look a lot alike," Lois said, making it up as she went. "And they've always been good friends. Um. They both—care—about me. Superman can't be a normal person and have a family, but Clark can. He can be around; he can be with me and with the children…"

"I never took you for a bigamist, Lois."

Lois gaped at her sister in outrage, but realized she'd walked right into that one and there wasn't really a way out.

"I—I'm not, _not_; I mean…" Unable to think of anything further to say, Lois sat staring at her sister, slightly gaping.

"We are not a codfish, sweetheart," Clark said, appearing in the space next to the pair of them. Lois snapped her mouth shut, looking at him instead of at her sister. She couldn't think of a thing to say and it was very disconcerting. Lucy looked similarly tongue-tied, though she looked deeply peeved, or maybe disturbed, at the same time. Clark noted their mutual inability to speak and smirked. "I think you and I should go for a walk, Mrs. Troupe," he said, in a tone that fell somewhere between a suggestion and an order. "And maybe you should lie down for awhile, Lois?" That one was definitely a suggestion.

"Yes, I think I will," Lois said, smirking at the difference in his tone. It wasn't until later, when she'd bid them both goodbye and made her way to the spare cot in Ella's room that she realized how easily he'd gotten her to do just what he wanted her to do. Somehow, though, she found it more amusing than annoying (she blamed that on the hormones, too).

-

"I really don't know what to say to you about this," Lucy said after Lois had left. "I don't get it at all."

"I love her," Clark responded simply, smiling fondly at the ultrasound photo before pocketing it and bussing the tray, gesturing for Lucy to follow him out of the cafeteria.

"Enough to share her with another man? To raise his children as your own?" Clark observed that the Lane sisters looked very much alike when they were outraged on behalf of another.

"Enough to do anything for her," he replied softly. Lucy let off her tirade in favor of following him into the elevator and giving him a look like he was absolutely insane. It wasn't long before they arrived at the deserted roof. "Even tell her sister the biggest secret I've ever kept because it will make her life easier."

* * *

EPILOGUE

Molly Mariah Kent was born at 7 a.m. on the dot, July 21, 2009. She had bright blue eyes, black fuzz atop her head, and her father was her favorite person from the moment she began screaming her unhappiness to have been forced to leave the warm, dark comfort of the womb for the cold, bright unhappiness of the world at large.

"This one's definitely yours," Lois told Clark between pushes, just after he'd walked in from dealing with an untimely volcanic disturbance somewhere in the Ring of Fire.

"What makes you so sure?" he'd asked, holding her hand and enjoying the fact that his invulnerability enveloped her when they were close, meaning it hurt like hell when she clenched her fingers around his through the labor pains.

"It's another effing early riser," she said, trying to smile at him but mostly just gritting her teeth in his direction.

The hubbub of a new family member seemed to swirl on for eons. Ella had been released from the hospital, all that remained as evidence of her stroke a saggy right eyelid—she was a bit slower on her feet, but just as eager visit and mollycoddle, dragging along the ever-hovering, ever-silent General. Lucy and family were always nearby, as were Martha and Ben. Bruce and Alfred arrived with several much too expensive gifts ("Really, who spend a hundred dollars on something she'll out-grow in a month?" Martha had wondered aloud). Jimmy and several others from the _Planet _had stopped by—baby Molly was holding court (in her sleep) at Clark's apartment—as well.

It was a full week (and an angry tirade on Lois's part) before friends and relatives stopped arriving unannounced. For awhile, it had seemed like there was always a grandparent, aunt or pseudo-uncle around trying to help out, making it difficult for to maintain the family secrets.

"Everybody out," Lois had finally said, her voice a harsh whisper as she'd just gotten Molly to sleep in her bassinet in Clark's bedroom.

Ella, Bruce, Alfred, Jimmy, Lucy, Ron, Jenny, Lola, Holly-from-Accounting, George-from-Business, and Miranda-from-Lifestyles had all looked at her, affronted.

"I mean it," she said, arms akimbo, glaring at them all, spread out unhelpfully in the living room with Ella keeping herself busy in the kitchen. "Believe it or not, one man and one woman _can_ manage to take care of their children with no help from over-supportive relatives!"

The crowd had begun gathering their things, looking a bit offended.

"It's not that we don't appreciate your being here," Clark had said quickly, running an uneasy hand through his hair. He'd meant it as a sort of parting-words on his part, but a few people had looked like they might choose to stay, assuming he was adding a disclaimer to Lois's statements. "It's just that it's… a bit crowded."

"Right. So," Lois said, making herding motions with her arms. "Love you all dearly, thanks for coming; everybody out."

Good-byes were said, hugs were given, and the apartment slowly began to empty. Lucy, Jimmy, and Ella lingered the longest, Lucy and Jimmy wondering if the shooing had just been for those who weren't in on The Secret to give Clark a little more freedom to come and go, while Ella just seemed to think that "we need some time alone as a family" didn't apply to grandmothers.

"I assure you, we'll be just fine," Lois said, hugging her sister then her mother, then closing the door, leaning back against it and breathing a sigh of relief.

The quiet lasted approximately five seconds before Molly let them know that she was awake and unhappy that they hadn't noticed yet.

"Is this all babies do?" Jason asked, dropping his crayons to put flatten his hands over his ears.

"Is what all babies do?" Lois asked, easing herself onto the couch beside him to look over his shoulder at his drawings—he'd been tasked with creating drawings to decorate Molly's room (or at least the wall in Clark's bedroom nearest where they kept the bassinet) and he was doing a grand job, drawing sunshines and flowers.

"Sleep and cry and poop and cry and sleep," Jason sighed, grabbing a new sheet of paper and starting on another sunshine.

"Yes, pretty much," Lois said, trying not to laugh. "It will be a few years before she'd big enough to play like you do."

Jason sighed heartily, making Lois laugh harder.

"Found her," Clark said, entering the room with the yellow-swaddled bundle that was Molly tucked into his arms. Lois loved watching Clark carry Molly around. There was something beautiful and fascinating about it—the happy, peaceful look on his face, the huge shoulders and muscled arms so gently cradling such a small bundle. She'd never tire of seeing him with their children.

"Oh good," Lois said, relaxing into the cushions and smirking at him. Clark smiled back—he was still stuck in what the General had dubbed his 'grinning fool' phase—and joined her on the couch. Jason immediately stood up to peer down at his baby sister, all complaints of sleeping and crying and pooping forgotten.

_Yes, _Lois thought, leaning back against the sofa and Clark, able to see Molly's little face between the folds of the blanket, big blue eyes staring up at Jason's identical blue eyes staring down into hers, watching each other, _we'll be just fine._

"So when are you guys getting married?" Jason asked, looking up at them with earnest eyes and a trace of an impish grin.

* * *

_A/N: A great, big TH__ANK__ YOU to everybody who has managed to put up with my fickle posting schedule through to the end of this portion of the story!!! __Addendum to that, this has turned out to be just the first portion/half of the story, as it were. The sequel ("Identity Crisis: the Crisis" or something along those lines) will be along shortly._

_Thanks again—_

_— mak:)_


End file.
